From Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth
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This Focused Policy Assessment presents the rationale, cost model, and cost estimates for the Affordable Childcare Scheme (ACS). The ACS (subsequently implemented as the National Childcare Scheme) was designed a national scheme of financial support towards the cost of childcare. The structure of the ACS used for this Assessment was based on the DCEDIY’s Affordable Childcare Scheme Policy Paper (2016). The scheme was structured to provide a universal subsidy for children aged between 6 months and 3 years who are availing of registered childcare. In addition, as part of the scheme a progressive system of income-related subsidies was to be made available to all parents with children aged between 6 months and 15 years, with eligibility for a subsidy based on net parental income.
The Assessment lays out the rationale behind childcare supports like the ACS, before going on to evaluate the principle projected cost drivers of the scheme, as well as the assumptions made by the costing model. The core model is presented, which provides both a static and dynamic cost estimate for the scheme. Additionally, four policy extensions are considered which are based on alterations to key policy variables in order to demonstrate their potential effects on overall scheme costs. The assessment ends with cost estimates of the ACS based on the ESRI SWITCH model.
