Chartered Accountants Ireland welcomes this week’s announcement of a series of new measures to support early learning and childcare in the 2024/25 financial year in Northern Ireland. While the announcement marks an important step forward in supporting working parents as well as childcare providers themselves, the focus must now move toward developing a longer term strategy around securing more sustainable, affordable childcare in the region.
The measures announced as part of this week’s package include:
- £7.1 million to expand and stabilise existing early years and childcare provision (programmes such as Sure Start, Pathway, Toybox and others including those focused on supporting children with special educational needs and disabilities).
- £2 million to address sustainability challenges and deliver a targeted business support scheme for childcare providers to assist those in financial difficulty and in areas where the demand for childcare exceeds supply.
- £5 million to begin the transition process for standardising the pre-school education programme to 22.5 hours for all children. This is expected to make an additional 2,200 full-time places available from September 2025.
- £9 million for a Northern Ireland Childcare Subsidy Scheme, with payments being made from September 2024.
- £2.5 million for a major data collection exercise to help with evaluation of these measures and inform the longer-term strategy.
A link to the official Ministerial Statement on the measures can be found here.
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