Marshalled List of Amendments

17 January 2025

Item 4: Order Paper 75/22-27 – Tuesday 21 January 2025

Motion: Unlocking Funding for Childcare Providers

Proposed:

That this Assembly welcomes the £50 million earmarked for early years and childcare in the Executive’s Draft Budget for 2025-2026; highlights the positive impact of the Northern Ireland Childcare Subsidy Scheme towards alleviating financial pressure on thousands of families and helping more parents, particularly women, to stay in, or return, to work; further welcomes that from September 2025 an additional 2,500 children in 105 pre-school settings throughout Northern Ireland will be offered full-time pre-school education; recalls that the package of early years and childcare measures agreed in May 2024 included a £2 million allocation for a targeted business support scheme for childcare providers; regrets, in this context, the failure of the Department for the Economy and Invest NI to expedite the scoping exercise necessary to inform the design of this scheme; notes that this comes at a time when many providers are already facing challenges to recruitment and retention, including grappling with rising national insurance costs; calls on the Minister for the Economy to explain the cause of this delay; and further calls on the Minister to work alongside Executive colleagues to expedite the delivery of this vital financial support to childcare providers in financial difficulty, as well as those in areas where the demand for childcare exceeds supply, as soon as possible.

Ms Diane Forsythe

Mr Phillip Brett

Mr Peter Martin

Mr David Brooks

Amendment

Leave out all after ‘business support scheme for childcare providers;’and insert:

‘and calls on the Minister for the Economy to work alongside Executive colleagues to expedite the delivery of this vital financial support to childcare providers in financial difficulty, as well as those in areas where the demand for childcare exceeds supply, as soon as possible; further calls on the Minister of Education to expand the Northern Ireland Childcare Subsidy Scheme to families of all children using registered childcare and to set a clear deadline for the publication of a new early learning and childcare strategy including a transparent, long-term funding plan for the sector to invest in providers while improving affordability for parents.’

[Ms Sinéad McLaughlin]

[Mr Matthew O’Toole]

[Mr Colin McGrath]