2865. Deputy Grace Boland asked the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality whether her Department has estimated the annual cost of expanding financial supports under Core Funding to enable all graduate qualified early learning and childcare educators to be recognised through the Graduate Lead Educator Premium, or a comparable funding mechanism; if so, the estimated cost; and if she will make a statement on the matter [60514/26]

Core Funding is a supply-side grant to providers designed to support quality, sustainability, and enhanced public management, with associated conditions in relation to fee control and cost transparency, incorporating funding for administration, and to support the employment of graduate staff.

The calculation of a service’s Core Funding grant contains multiple elements – the Base Rate, Graduate Premiums (including the Graduate Lead Educator Premium and the Graduate Manager Premium), Targeted Measures and the Staff Funding Additional Contribution.

The Graduate Lead Educator Premium, which pays out a rate of €4.44 per graduate-led hour, supports the employment of graduate staff. The premium is paid for every hour that an Early Learning and Care (ELC) or combined ELC/School Age Childcare (SAC) session is led by a graduate Lead Educator, with the condition of a maximum of one Graduate Lead Educator premium per room at a time.

In programme year 4 of Core Funding, the cost of supporting the Graduate Lead Educator Premium is anticipated to amount to c. €47.5 million – which accounts for almost 12% of the overall year 4 Core Funding allocation.

These allocations are underpinned by the graduate staff in lead educator roles in a given service and are paid directly to the Partner Service as part of their overall Core Funding grant allocation. It is important to note that the €4.44 is an uplift and is not intended to cover the total cost of pay associated with a graduate staff member.

However, the increased allocation also includes up to a maximum of €45 million to support providers to meet possible additional cost of increases in minimum rates of pay for early years educators and school-age childcare practitioners through independently negotiated rates of pay by the early years services Joint Labour Committee. Costs related to Graduate Lead Educators will be included in this allocation, which will be released once new Employment Regulation Orders are established.

I wish to note to the Deputy that the Graduate Lead Educator Premium is linked to rooms rather than to individual educators, and therefore calculating the cost if all staff members who qualify as graduates were to receive the Premium is quite complex.

Utilising Core Funding Year 4 data, the Department estimates that if the €4.44 premium was applied to the total hours worked by staff holding a minimum QQI level 7 qualification who work in ratio with children in ELC and combined ELC/SAC services, then the approximate cost would be €80.6 million – equating to an increase in Core Funding allocation requirements of €33.1 million (or 70%).

However, I wish to caveat that this figure includes SAC hours which do not attract the Graduate Lead Educator Premium, nor are these hours linked to staff data.

Under the Core Funding Partner Service Funding Agreement, the Graduate Lead Educator Premium is payable only once at any one time within a given room, even though multiple Graduate Lead Educators can be assigned to a single room at any one time. To amend this policy would require a complete reassessment of the entire Core Funding model and at this juncture, this is not envisaged.

The current policy is in alignment with the Expert Group’s recommendations outlined in the report Partnership for the Public Good: A New Funding Model for Early Learning and Care and School-Age Childcare, which informed the development of the Together for Better funding model. Core Funding incorporated funding to support the employment of graduate-led staff. Therefore, it is important that funding incentivises providers to employ graduate staff in a leading capacity rather than in a supporting role.

The Department will explore further changes based on the operation of year 5 of the Scheme as well as stakeholder input and income and cost data from providers.