Member's statement: Childcare: Funding and Strategy

Member's statement by Mrs Michelle Guy on 19 May 2025.

MLA

Mrs Michelle Guy

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

19 May 2025

Type

Member's statement

Business

Members' Statements

Heading

Childcare: Funding and Strategy

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4967853

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I stand to speak about the recent announcement of how the £55 million allocated to early years and childcare will be spent this year. I welcome much of the funding announcement. Having spent a great deal of time with providers, parents and bodies from the sector, I know that they want us to work constructively on the issues for families. We have said since the introduction of the childcare subsidy scheme that it needed to be built on. In fact, the very first question that I asked in the Chamber was whether support for families would be expanded to school-age children, so it is positive that the Education Minister has listened to those calls and extended the scheme to include children of primary-school age. The cost of childcare continues to be a major concern for so many families. While the announcement does not increase the 15% subsidy rate, which needs to happen, it will expand the number of families who can avail themselves of support and will further help those with multiple children. It is also really positive that programmes such as Sure Start will continue to receive some additional funds to help with increasing costs. I have seen at first hand the impact of Sure Start in my constituency of Lagan Valley. I also hope that the committed money for the Pathway fund gets to providers that applied swiftly. Providers have been placed in incredibly difficult circumstances, with some staff having been placed on protected notice. Of course, I welcome the further investment to support preschools that are transitioning to offer full-time hours. That is crucial to early learning and is especially important for children facing educational disadvantage. The £55 million from the Executive is hugely welcome after decades of underinvestment. However, we still await the much-delayed early learning and childcare strategy, which is crucial to securing long-term transformational change for children and families. The strategy needs to be informed by the huge amount of research that has been done over the years, and it needs to reflect the true experience of families and parents. Parents have concerns about the recent Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) childcare survey. They are not questioning how the survey was carried out; they are concerned about how the information has been presented. On the average monthly costs of childcare per child, the survey results state:

"In cases where a child is spending two days with a grandparent or relative and two days in nursery, the child will be included in the 31-40hrs per week band".

Surely we cannot combine informal forms of childcare with paid childcare, as such data would not reflect the actual cost that parents face. All that families ask for is to be heard and for the actual costs that they face per day of childcare and how that adds up week on week, month on month, to be shown. I hope that clarity will be provided and that the true cost of paid childcare is acknowledged in policymaking.

501 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:36 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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