677. Deputy Ciarán Ahern asked the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality whether governance arrangements within city and county childcare committees would prevent a chairperson from simultaneously holding a senior management position with a childcare provider, and whether this would represent a conflict of interest; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [51652/26]

City and County Childcare Committees are independent voluntary organisations, each with a distinct legal identity and board of directors. The Board are the legal entity and governance structure of the Childcare Committee and are mandated by the Childcare Committees own Memorandum and Articles of Association or Constitution as required by the Company’s Registration Office and, where applicable, the Charities Regulator. Members of Childcare Committee Boards individually and collectively as company directors and as a legal entity are subject to governance responsibilities and accountabilities under common law and the Companies Act 2014. As such, the Department holds no role in the membership of individual boards or committees and it is a matter for each committee to select their own membership.

Therefore, it is for the membership of each CCC Board to identify and adjudicate on whether holding a senior management position with a childcare provider represents a conflict of interest in respect to their position on the board of the CCC.

In addition to being the Childcare Committees’ primary funding provider, the Department has both an oversight and governance role in CCC administration. While the committees are independent, voluntary entities, the Department has a responsibility to ensure the proper management of public funds and that governance structures, such as appropriate boards of management, are in place to administer them.

The Department manages the annual statement of work process which involves the identification of actions to be carried out by the Childcare Committees based on Departmental priorities, the agreement of those actions with Childcare Committee representatives, ensuring appropriate reporting arrangements and a mid-year review to confirm ongoing commitment to Department goals.

On 29th March 2022 Government accepted the findings of the independent Review of the Early Learning and Childcare Operating Model in Ireland that a dedicated State Agency is the optimal operating model for the early learning and childcare sector for the years ahead.

Significant progress has already been made in advancing this ambitious and transformative reform programme. A Programme Oversight Board was established to oversee this important work. It was comprised of interdepartmental representatives alongside several external experts with experience at senior level in change management, large-scale reform, leadership, governance, public policy, and a knowledge of the sector.

The Department engaged independent consultants Indecon in December 2023, on foot of a competitive procurement process, to undertake an initial phase of research, analysis and stakeholder engagement to inform the design of the Agency. The Department committed to ongoing and extensive consultation with stakeholders as to how best to design and implement the recommendation to establish a new Agency. In December 2023 the first of a series of stakeholder consultation sessions attended by Pobal, City/County Childcare Committee managers, staff and board members along with wider stakeholders in the Early Years sector with the focus on the Agency vision, mission and values. A report has been compiled from these initial consultations and the report has been circulated to the participating stakeholders and published to the Agency web page. Consultation events also took place throughout 2024 with the focus on function mapping for the Agency and mapping of the workforce across the operating model.

Indecon’s work is largely complete and in November 2025 a draft consolidated report was approved in principle by the Agency Programme Oversight Board. Those final edits are being concluded.

In the coming weeks further consultation and engagement with key Government Departments on the findings of the report is planned. This will be in advance of returning to update government, as was committed to in the decision of March 2022.