Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)
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89. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the number of children accessing early childhood education and school age childcare on the NCS sponsorship subsidy; if he will provide a breakdown of same by county, in tabular form; and if he will provide a breakdown of same by way of percentage of those in community and private services. [21917/24]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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The Sponsorship arrangement available under the National Childcare Scheme (NCS) makes special provision for vulnerable children.

The NCS Sponsorship arrangement allows designated bodies to refer children to the Scheme where early learning and care is needed on child welfare, protection, family support or other specified grounds. Where a referral is made by a Sponsor body, the family will automatically qualify for a subsidy without having to satisfy the Scheme’s eligibility, income or enhanced hours requirements. The Scheme will pay the full cost of the early learning and care for families referred to the Scheme by a Sponsor Body.

As of 22 April, the total number of unique children benefitting from NCS Sponsorship arrangements is 4,830. A breakdown of this figure according to county is as follows:

The majority of children availing of NCS Sponsorship attend Community services. A detailed breakdown is as follows:

Finally, in terms of methodology, please note that a child may attend more than one service. These services may be in different counties, or different organising types (i.e. community or private) - for this reason a child may appear in the counts for multiple counties or organisation types. However, the child will only appear once for the total . For this reason, the sum of the number of children in all counties/organisation types may be greater than the total number of unique children.

Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)
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90. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth if he will provide a breakdown of referrals for NCS sponsorship by each of the Minister for Education, the Minister for Justice, Tusla, the HSE and local authorities in each of the years 2022, 2023 and to date in 2024, in tabular form. [21918/24]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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The Sponsorship arrangement available under the National Childcare Scheme (NCS) makes special provision for vulnerable children.

The NCS Sponsorship arrangement allows designated bodies to refer children to the Scheme where early learning and care is needed on child welfare, protection, family support or other specified grounds. Where a referral is made by a Sponsor body, the family will automatically qualify for a subsidy without having to satisfy the Scheme’s eligibility, income or enhanced hours requirements. The Scheme will pay the full cost of the early learning and care for families referred to the Scheme by a Sponsor Body.

A full breakdown of the number of children receiving Sponsorship in the specified years, according to Sponsor body is detailed below. The table includes a year-to-date figure for 2024 (up to week starting 29 April).

Please note that children may have sponsored claims under applications by multiple Sponsor Bodies throughout the year. In such cases, they will be counted under the relevant Sponsor Bodies for the individual totals however, they will only be counted once for the Grand Total, where they are identified uniquely. For this reason, there may be some variance between the total of the rows above and the Grand Total.

Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)
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91. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the average childcare fee paid by parents in each county in each of the years 2022, 2023 and to date in 2024, in tabular form; the lowest childcare fee paid by parents in each county in each of the years 2022, 2023 and to date in 2024, in tabular form; and the highest childcare fee paid by parents in each county in each of the years 2022, 2023 and to date in 2024, in tabular form. [21919/24]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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Every year Pobal compiles data on behalf of my Department from Early Learning and Care (ELC) and School Age Childcare (SAC) providers as part of the Annual Early Years Sector Profile Survey (AEYSP).

In December 2023, my Department launched the Early Learning and Childcare Data website. The website provides a new and innovative way of displaying administrative data as well as survey data collected annually from over 4,400 early learning and childcare services across the country, supporting evidence-informed policy development and planning.

This new website will replace the traditional paper-based AEYSP report. It will include interactive dashboards released by Pobal on behalf of my Department. To date, the website includes dashboards providing an overview of service providers and capacity. Dashboards for fees are expected to be released in the coming weeks.

The most recently published fee data for the 2020/21 programme year indicates that the average* weekly fee per child before subsidies was €186.84 for full day, €110.92 for part-time, and €74.20 for sessional service provision. The average weekly fee by county and type of care provision shows that Dun Laoghaire Rathdown had the average highest fees, nationally, while Monaghan and Carlow had the lowest.

It is worth noting that averages can mask significant variations within counties. For example, the highest weekly full day fee charged by an individual service was in Dún Laoghaire Rathdown (€324.35). However, the lowest full day weekly fee charged in the same local authority was €134. The highest weekly part-time fee in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown was €239.50 and the lowest was €78.50.

Table 1. Average weekly fee by county and type of care provision (full-day, part-time, sessional)

Fee management was introduced with the substantial investment of Core Funding in September 2022. This follows the recommendations of the Expert Group, approved by Government, to first limit increases in fee rates. This effectively freezes services’ fees at those they charged to parents in September 2021 to ensure that the introduction of Fee Management to the sector was done in a sustainable and considered manner. Increasing the Core Funding budget while maintaining the same level of conditions on fees, will help embed the Core Funding Fee Management system in the sector and prepare the sector for the ongoing development of fee management in future years.

Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)
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92. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the estimated percentage of Government funding, as against private fees, funding the early years sector; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21920/24]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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The Department does not gather data on parental fee income to early learning and childcare services other than occasional research studies, e.g. the independent review of costs. The independent review of costs undertaken by Crowe in 2018 on behalf of the Department found that approximately 40% of the total income to the sector in 2017 came from parental fees at a time when annual state investment in the sector was €466 million. This percentage varied significantly across services. Many services relied entirely on State funding while a small proportion of service relied exclusively on parental fees.

Core Funding, which began in September 2022, is the new funding stream to start a partnership for the public good between the State and providers. In its first programme year (September 2022 – August 2023) 95% of eligible services signed up to Core Funding.

In line with a recommendation in Partnership for the Public Good, providers that had an active Core Funding Contract during the 2022/2023 Programme Year must provide validated Financial Returns as per their Core Funding Partner Service Funding Agreement.

The reporting requirement will consist of a sector specific Income and Expenditure Template. This Income and Expenditure Template is due on the 26 June 2024 and will provide details of their income and costs, which should provide up to date insight in to the financial operations of services.