Minister Foley allocates additional funding to support children with disabilities access State-funded pre-school
- Published on: 10 October 2025
- Last updated on: 10 October 2025
The Minister for Children, Disability, and Equality, Norma Foley, today announced she will make additional funding available to support children with disabilities access State-funded preschool.
Additional capitation, provided through the Access and Inclusion Model (AIM), will increase by 10 percent.
This will directly benefit early learning and care services who support children with disabilities to access and participate in mainstream pre-school settings.
Around 8,000 pre-school children with disabilities are currently supported by the highest level of the Access and Inclusion Model supports.
Providers can use the Access and Inclusion Model funding either to reduce the number of children they are catering for in a pre-school room or to fund an extra staff member.
This is intended to provide the maximum benefit from the AIM funding to children with disabilities to ensure their meaningful participation in pre-school with their peers.
All services in receipt of this capitation will benefit from a 10 percent capitation increase from October 13.
This will match the 10 percent increase in the minimum rates of pay for over 35,000 early years educators and school age practitioners, which have been provided for in a new Employment Regulation Order. This also comes into effect on October 13 and is supported by the Government’s Core Funding Scheme.
Minister Foley said:
“The new proposals for a 10 percent increase in minimum pay for early years educators next week on October 13 represent a significant step toward ensuring fair pay for educators and practitioners working in the sector.
I am pleased to announce that the same 10 percent increase will be provided to providers in receipt of Level 7 capitation under the Access and Inclusion Model.
This is a recognition of essential work being done every day by early years educators to create inclusive, welcoming environments where every child can thrive.
It reflects our ongoing commitment to inclusion and ensures that providers and early years educators are appropriately supported in delivering high quality care for all children through the Access and Inclusion Model.”
Since its introduction in 2016, the Access and Inclusion Model has had a major impact on the lives of children with disabilities and additional needs in pre-schools.
The proportion of services that have a child with a disability or additional needs attending has increased by over 50% during this time. There are currently around 8,000 children benefiting from the Access and Inclusion Model.
In total, 35,000 children have received more than 80,000 targeted supports in over 4,800 services nationally since the Access and Inclusion Model was set up.
The Access and Inclusion Model originally provided supports for pre-school children with disabilities during the free, universal, two-year Early Childhood Care and Education Programme (ECCE).
Since September last year, Access and Inclusion Model supports have been available to children outside the Early Childhood Care and Education Programme (ECCE), both in and out of term. This means they can avail of the supports in their local provider for a total of six hours per day during term time and six hours per day out of term.
An additional €5.4 million has been allocated by the Government to the Access and Inclusion Model under Budget 2026, bringing the total budget allocation to €86.1 million.