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Investigateschildcare feesOVER 50 CHILDCARE providers have left the government’s Core Funding scheme in the last few years, putting further pressure on parents and the affordability of much-needed childcare.
Figures obtained by The Journal Investigates from Pobal show that 51 childcare providers have withdrawn from the government scheme, which provides funding to early learning and school-age childcare providers towards their operating costs.
The vast majority of providers have left in the last two years.
The scheme, which is in its fourth year, aims to improve the affordability of childcare as it has frozen fees since September 2021.
Providers in the scheme can still increase their fees, but they must seek approval from the Department of Children first.
The Journal has previously reported that the Department approved around 850 fee increases last year, representing almost 20% of all childcare providers.
Some providers have claimed that the rising cost of living isn’t covered by the government’s grant, and their inability to raise fees without prior approval has left them struggling to get by.
But by leaving the scheme, providers are free to increase their fees substantially, with some parents being hit with €300-400 a month increases this year.
This means that parents are faced with filling the gap left by the government funding.
And with childcare places in many parts of the country scarce, parents are left with nowhere to go.
“Some providers have regrettably chosen to withdraw from Core Funding,” a spokesperson for the Department of Children said, adding that 84% of open services have continued their participation in the scheme.
All but two of the 51 childcare providers withdrew from the Core Funding scheme in the past two years. The Journal Investigates obtained these figures from Pobal under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act.
Two providers withdrew in the 2022/2023 school year. This jumped to 24 in 2023/2024.
Significantly, this trend has continued into 2024/2025 with 25 providers notifying the Department they would no longer be continuing in the scheme ahead of the new school year.
11 of these providers announced that they were leaving the scheme this summer, leaving parents little time to make alternative arrangements if they can’t afford the fee increases.
The vast majority of withdrawals have come in Dublin, where childcare fees are already the most expensive in the country. Many providers in Cork, Galway and Wicklow also left.
Some of these withdrawals may be linked to providers closing down, so not all will have raised their fees. But for those who have, the burden has fallen on parents.
The government is “expecting services to be delivered on a shoestring”, Elaine Dunne, chairperson of the Federation of Early Year Childhood Providers, told The Journal Investigates.
She said unless the government “adequately invests” in childcare, the exodus of providers from Core Funding will continue, adding that the election promise to bring down fees to €200 a month is “never going to happen”.
Labour TD Marie Sherlock told The Journal Investigates that many providers “have done their very best to stay within Core Funding, to do the right thing by parents…[but] they are now finding themselves in a very difficult position because of an increase in costs.” She added:
Parents have no choice but to cough up that money.
Sherlock also told our team that if parents can’t afford the fee increases, they are faced with “having to reduce their hours or leave their work”, an issue that primarily falls on women, she said.
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Some providers that left the scheme ahead of this school year have substantially raised their fees.
Our team examined the fee list for each of these providers, comparing last year with this year to see if there had been any changes.
While some providers have not chosen to increase their fees this year, many others have, sometimes by hundreds of euro a month.
One such provider is Bright Sparks Montessori & Daycare in Clondalkin, Dublin. After leaving the scheme ahead of the new school year, full-time fees increased from €190 a week to €300 a week. This works out as an increase of €440 a month.
While government grants reduce the final cost for parents, the fee increase is still substantial.
The provider did not respond to a request for comment.
A chain of childcare providers in Dublin, Once Upon A Time, has also pulled four locations from the scheme. Three of these locations have increased full-time fees by over €300 a month, while the fourth has increased them by €297 a month.
David*, a parent with two children at one of these locations, told The Journal Investigates that the fee increase came as a bit of a shock, particularly given the size of the increase and the fact that he’d have to pay it twice.
“Ultimately, it’s the parents who pay the cost,” David said, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing pushback from their childcare provider.
He added that parents are completely exposed and have no protection from businesses withdrawing from the Core Funding scheme and hiking their fees.
“They know that parents have no choice. The only other alternative is to quit your job. And a lot of people can’t afford to do that.”
An email sent to parents by the provider and seen by The Journal Investigates labels the Core Funding scheme as “deeply flawed” that “traps services in outdated, frozen fee structures”.
The email goes on to say that their remaining locations will be withdrawn on a phased basis so that each location is “independently financially sustainable”.
Financial records show that the company that owns Once Upon A Time, Nurture Childcare Limited, made just over €2 million in profit in 2024. This increased from a little over €900,000 in 2023.
The two directors of the company also received a total pay package worth €1.1 million last year.
“These [fee] adjustments are necessary to replace the Core Funding subsidy,” a spokesperson for Once Upon a Time told The Journal Investigates, adding that they were not profit-driven.
They added that the surge in profit last year relates to a property revaluation.
The largest single provider in the country, Mary Geary’s Childcare in Cork, has also raised their fees significantly after leaving the Core Funding scheme.
Notably, this provider is not included in the list our team obtained from Pobal, suggesting that there may be others around the country who have pulled out.
The cost of full-time childcare for children under two years of age has increased by almost €490 a month.
Confirming the fee increases to The Journal Investigates, co-owner Ollie Sheehan said, “we’re taking back control of our business” by leaving the scheme.
Sheehan added that they’ve been forced to pull out to “sustain our business” and that the administrative hurdles put in place by the government, such as filling out fee tables and providing staff qualifications, were too great.
He also said that because there aren’t any funding incentives to provide a good service, “if I left my business hat on…you’ll do financially far better if you aim for a low standard”.
When asked if he had informed the Department of their decision to leave, Sheehan said, “Why would I bother telling them I left? [It would be a] waste of a phone call.”
Further departures from the scheme appear to be underway, with a spokesperson telling The Journal Investigates, “the Department is aware of recent correspondence from parents of four Little Harvard services that have withdrawn from Core Funding.”
Despite numerous attempts from our team, Little Harvard did not respond to a request for comment.
These providers withdrawing would bring the total number to 55.
While the numbers that have pulled out may be small in comparison to the overall number of over 4,200 childcare providers still in the scheme, changing providers is not easy in many parts of the country.
Pobal data suggests that there are currently 77,000 children on waiting lists for childcare places around the country, though some children are likely on multiple waiting lists.
This scarcity of places means that for many parents, they are faced with paying the fee increases or losing out on childcare altogether.
In an effort to reduce the cost of childcare, the government introduced a new maximum fee cap for all new and existing providers participating in the Core Funding Scheme from September this year.
The cap depends on how many hours of childcare are provided.
A press release from the Department of Children states that “under these new maximum fee caps, the highest possible fees will be no more than €295 per week for a full day place of between 40-50 hours per week”.
However, this is slightly misleading as the band which corresponds to the €295 a week is for between 40 hours and 49 hours and 59 minutes.
Many childcare providers that offer full day services do so from 8am to 6pm, or 50 hours a week – a minute over the band the Department described as “a full day place”.
Instead, the cap that applies to 50 hours and over is €354 a week.
Aisling*, a parent in Dublin, told The Journal Investigates that the “misrepresentation” by the government annoyed her after she was told by her childcare provider that their fees wouldn’t be reduced to the €295 cap.
“I looked at some of the creches that are local to me, and there was not one that was open for less than [50] hours,” she said.
When asked by The Journal Investigates about this, a spokesperson for the Department said the majority of services operate between 40-50 hours a week, and that was why it was chosen to illustrate the cap.
However, the data shows a significant proportion of services are also open 50 hours and beyond a week.
The approximately 10% of services that are above the new fee caps are reducing their fees to the maximum allowable rate, the spokesperson added.
But as more and more childcare providers leave the government’s Core Funding scheme, for many parents the only direction fees are going is up.
*Names have been changed
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Have you been impacted by a childcare provider withdrawing from Core Funding and increasing their fees? We want to hear from you. Contact our team at investigates@thejournal.ie with your story.
Reporter: Conor O’Carroll • Editor: Maria Delaney • Social Media: Cliodhna Travers • Main Image Design: Lorcan O’Reilly
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