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Department of Children review team undertakes audits to ensure core funding requirements are honoured
Department of Children review team undertakes audits to ensure core funding requirements are honoured Childcare providers are being investigated to ensure they honour agreements made under the Government's core funding model.
Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA WireIt comes in advance of a new audit process designed to identify creches that might be flouting their core funding rules and charging parents more than their 2021 agreed fee freeze. Under a 2022 agreement with the Government, childcare providers who received such additional funding promised to freeze their fees at 2021 levels.
Until now, no formal auditing of childcare fees had been done at Government level, and the Department of Children only became aware of childcare providers who may have been overcharging if, or when, a parent made a complaint. Irish trio who posed as tourists for ‘sob-story’ scam wanted by Spanish policeHolly Cairns repays €8,500 in expenses mistakenly paid by Oireachtas during maternity leave According to documents released under Freedom of Information, the number of such complaints has increased since 2024.
For the 2023/2024 year, there were only three such reviews, with just one finding a breach of core funding rules. The number of reviews increased to 17 in 2024/2025, with documents showing that at least seven childcare providers were caught overcharging parents. Only two were found to have “no breach” of their core funding rules.
Another three services closed entirely or dropped out of core funding, and five other fee reviews did not state whether a breach had been found or not. The number of investigations increased to 20 in 2025/2026. No outcome had yet been recorded for these investigations. One review, recorded in documents held by the Department of Children, stretched from 2023 to 2026 without finding a breach.
The department said that, since fee review investigations were first set up in 2024, there have been “59 fee reviews whereby an initiator has raised a potential breach of fee controls. In the last two years the number of reviews initiated annually has been relatively steady.
” A number of childcare providers have complained that the amount of Government funding they receive under the core funding arrangement is not sustainable and has not met inflation, prompting some creches to threaten to withdraw from the scheme so Minister for Children Norma Foley had said that, as of the end of July, only five providers had left the core funding scheme in 2025/2026, while 15 had joined. The department said childcare services that feel their fees “may not be sufficient to sustain their business can access other supports while remaining in core funding”.
“For example, eligible services could apply for controlled fee increases in 2024. A new process for controlled fee increases was recently announced,” a spokesman said. Tusla pays legal fees for vulnerable child who could not avail of solicitor due to strikeIrish trio who posed as tourists for ‘sob-story’ scam wanted by Spanish policePublic transport increases, creche overcharging, and Patrick Freyne’s Kardashian analysisSouth Dublin hospital gifted to State with plans for new HSE facility on site
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