Council eyes direct role in delivering childcare services amid crisis

While Dublin City Council has enabled childcare services for decades, a new plan aims recognise it as "critical infrastructure for a functioning city" and address systems that have become "too complex" for small and non-profit providers

News Stephen Holland Local Democracy Reporter 15:51, 23 Jul 2026 View Image A teacher helping children in childcare (Image: Getty)

Dublin City Council may be getting into the childcare business as it considers its status as “critical infrastructure for a functioning city”.

In an effort to address the childcare crisis across Dublin city, which is characterised by chronic shortages, surging costs and a dearth of spaces, a cross-party working group met four times from January to June this year. Through engagement with private and non-profit providers, the Department of Children and over 70 stakeholders, they have formed a “practical, staged pathway” to tackling the crisis.

Social Democrats Councillor Cian Farrell outlined the group’s finding and ambitions to the Community, Gaeilge, Sport, Arts & Culture SPC on Monday. He said they determined that Dublin’s childcare system has not failed but is under immense pressure and requires intervention.

Citing rising staffing and operating costs, volunteers carrying professional responsibilities, and small private operators facing unrealistic scale pressures, the working group concluded that Dublin’s childcare system around providers has become “too complex for small, standalone governance models to carry alone”. They are calling for a feasibility study and a potential Special Purpose Vehicle to actually run providers.

While DCC has not previously officially run childcare centres, Cllr Farrell explained this is not without precedent as they have been active in enabling and delivering childcare in the city for decades. As landlord to around 40 childcare facilities, the council is involved with one in three community non-profit operators across the city.

The next step is not to “start again” when it comes to childcare and infrastructure provision but to “to formalise and coordinate the role DCC already plays”. Cllr Farrell stated a key issue is filling in the gaps in current planning requirements, which often require the provision of childcare space to secure permission but the follow through can be weak.

He said that planning secures childcare floor area in a scheme, which results in a “shell or grey box space”. This represents a planning requirement on paper, but fit-out and capital works, staff and an operator, as well as affordability and long-term governance are still missing.

Cllr Farrell explained that current planning and policy regulations enable potential new childcare services to technically become available but the result is “not an operational service”. He said planners basically deliver an “empty room” and that a change of planning use a few years down the line is often inevitable when the space has not been properly fitted out.

But capital funding of €135 million from the Department of Children can provide local authorities with the means of turning these “grey box spaces” into operating services. Cllr Farrell said DCC could own and deliver buildings and then find a non-profit provider to actually run it. A proposed pilot programme seeks to demonstrate the council’s ambitions through five public-linked sites by 2030.

These include creches at Donore / St. Teresa's Gardens, Bluebell Waterways, and Cherry Orchard Point. As well as creche and community facilities at Emmet Road and Ballymun.

As a pilot programme it’s hoped that, if successful, it could pave the way for more developments across the city and ultimately provide a blueprint for local authorities nationally. With 436 childcare providers across Dublin city, 70% are for profit and just 30% and non-profit, which means a significant amount of government funding and grants go directly to private businesses.

Cllr Farrell outlined the importance of subsidies for reducing costs to parents and the crucial role private providers play in reaching childcare targets. But, he also said “as we continue to give more grants we are just basically handing that over to some of these companies” and it’s important that non-profits can compete.

A key issue the group’s engagement brought up was the complexity of the many programmes and policies providers must traverse. While these initiatives are “well-intended,” Cllr Farrell said the way they have accumulated together makes things burdensome for operators, especially small non-profits and small providers who don’t have the scale and resources of larger operators.

One way to address this is to mimic the method of StarBright, a community, not-for-profit chain that allows smaller facilities to come together and share admin duties through central head office. StarBright operates seven centres in South West Dublin, which includes 480 children and families as well as over 85 staff members.

Cllr Farrell explained this is a way to tackle the complexity issue while allowing non-profit and smaller providers to compete with larger private companies. The group’s findings suggested this as a “model to try and emulate”.

Overall, the proposal is to adopt childcare as social and community infrastructure and establish a cross departmental process between DCC and the Department of Children to deliver it. The goal is to ensure childcare is planned, mapped, protected and activated like other infrastructure and that it is considered in early housing, regeneration and community planning.

Section 66 of the Local Government Act 2002 states: “A local authority may take such measures, engage in such activities or do such things as it considers necessary or desirable to promote the interests of the local community." This includes the power to enter into “arrangements, including the incorporation of companies, to deliver those services."

Cllr Farrell stressed that elected representatives get to “decide what is good for the community” and to classify childcare as a “core competency” would provide DCC more scope to get actively involved in the provision of services. He reiterated that this is a first step toward addressing the childcare crisis.

The current proposal will not establish a company, employ childcare staff, procure an operator, approve a site, or commit to capital expenditure. Each of these requires its own separate legal, budgetary and executive process.

Instead, it approves suitability assessments on the five pipeline sites with community, housing and planning and commissions an in-depth feasibility study on a DCC–Department joint venture to run operations.

The Draft Childcare as Social and Community Infrastructure Report 2026 to 2028 was unanimously approved by the Community, Gaeilge, Sport, Arts & Culture SPC. Now, the final report is being prepared and it will go to the full council for approval in September.

This content is funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme

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