Childcare Budget announcements do not apply to large swathes of parents: NWC
Published: Friday, October 09, 2026
Publishing its post-budget analysis, the National Women’s Council (NWC) has said the government’s childcare announcements in Budget 2027 are irrelevant for large swathes of families caught up in the childcare crisis. For 46,000 children on waiting lists around the country, they will not apply. For at least 52,000 families who use the services of childminders, they will not apply. For families in the 415 creches operating outside the Core Funding scheme, they will not apply. Even within Core Funding, for parents paying for over 40 hours (many not by choice) they will not see anything like the €2,200 reduction announced by government on Tuesday.
NWC Executive Director Corrinne Hasson said:
“We welcome the Government rightly naming childcare as a defining issue of this term, and its repeated commitment to prioritising it within each budget. Following Tuesday’s announcements however, many parents will feel very left behind. And the reality is that the brunt of the childcare crisis is borne by women. It's incredibly disappointing that the Government has again invested significant amounts of money into a system that is just not fit for purpose. We need a complete shift in the way we are thinking about childcare. It is an essential public service that should provide a right to early years care and education to every child in the country. NWC published a clear roadmap to a public system of childcare, starting with the State taking over educators' wages and increasing supply by directly taking over delivery of childcare. Budget 2027 is a missed opportunity to start our transition to this urgently needed and much more sustainable public model. We look forward to continuing to work with Government to design a childcare system that works for every child, parent and educator.”
On gender-based violence, NWC welcomed additional funding to tackle domestic, sexual and gender-based violence and for Cuan. However, given the scale of the crisis, with over half of women (52%) having experienced sexual violence in their lifetime according to the CSO, €5.3 million falls short. NWC will engage with officials to understand how the allocation will be spent but said it was disappointing that the budget announcements contain no measures for prevention or for tackling the root causes of violence against women. NWC welcomed ring-fenced funding to begin long-awaited civil legal aid reforms, as well as increased funding for civil legal aid. It said this should be a step towards free legal aid for all victim-survivors of gender-based violence, which NWC has long called for.
NWC is also critical of the tax reforms announced in Tuesday’s budget, pointing out that well over half of women earn less than €44,000, meaning they won’t see a penny of these reforms. NWC has reiterated its long-standing position that it is much more beneficial to women, and to society as a whole, to invest in public services rather than cut taxes. In this regard, the organisation welcomed the new permanent Cost of Disability payment but said it will need to be increased significantly in order to meet the needs of disabled women.
NWC again welcomed the expansion of the Free Contraception Scheme for women up to 37 but restated its call for all age limits, and other barriers to the scheme, to be removed as soon as possible. NWC also raised serious concern that, nearly a decade after it was first recommended in 2017, there is still no clear timeline for Ireland's first Mother and Baby Unit. Despite a €108 million increase in mental health funding, Budget 2027 confirms only that the unit will be located at St Vincent's University Hospital. Until it is delivered, mothers who need inpatient mental health care after birth will continue to be separated from their babies at one of the most vulnerable times of their lives.
While NWC warmly welcomed the increase to the Fuel Allowance and the inclusion of HAP and RAS tenants in the raft of new grants for renewable energy, it is disappointed at the lack of big picture thinking in the shape of a plan to wean our society off fossil fuels. In fact, some retrograde steps have been taken in this regard, including the delaying of carbon tax increases.
Corrinne Hasson concluded:
“This budget has been called a budget for workers, but for many working women, this budget will make very little material change. A budget for women would have made structural changes and invested the country’s vast resources in public services. It would have provided women with decent pensions, and an opportunity to participate in society on an equal footing. We look to next year to be the budget for women.”
Find here NWC’s Post-Budget Feminist Analysis: https://www.nwci.ie/images/uploads/NWC_Post_Budget_2027_Feminist_Analysis.pdf