State childcare providers may get commercial rates relief

The Government is to move to ensure providers offering the State's free childcare programme are exempt from costly commercial rates bill.

The Early Childhood Care and Education Programme (ECCE) is a free, two-year programme available to children between two years and eight months of age, and five years old.

It runs five days a week and provides three hours of free pre-school a day. Over 4,000 services are signed up to the scheme, however some providers have left, citing rising costs and a lack of State funding.

These costs were exacerbated in recent months after it emerged Tailte Éireann has issued commercial rates bills for ECCE-only services for the first time, with some bills costing thousands of euros.

Tailte Éireann is a government agency that provides a property registration system, property valuation service, and national mapping and surveying infrastructure for the State.

The Coalition is examining how ECCE providers might not be hit with these bills with Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage John Cummins tasking his officials to explore how to make the necessary clarifications that ECCE only services are treated in the same way as not-for-profit childcare providers when it comes to commercial rates.

He has received examples from his Fine Gael colleague Emer Currie, showing ECCE-only services that provide State funded pre-school education receiving bills up to €7,000.

Under the Valuation (Amendment) Act 2015, an exemption was included to provide for an exemption for childcare providers that exclusively provide early childhood care and education and are established and operated on a not-for-profit basis.

The new substantial charges have led some providers to claim that the viability of their services has been threatened.

"It is unsatisfactory that ECCE-only providers who have not previously been charged commercial rates are now receiving rates bills from Local Authorities on foot of valuations by Tailte Éireann," said Minister Cummins.

"I recognise the significant pressure that such providers are already under and this is a matter that I want addressed. I have asked my officials to work through what changes are required to resolve it.

"If the Valuation Act needs to be amended to provide clarity and ensure this issue cannot arise, we must be prepared to take the necessary steps to do so," he added.

Figures obtained by RTÉ News from the Department of Children in January show that 977 early years childcare services have closed since 2019.

During that time, 579 new services were opened.