Dear Service Provider,
Effective today; 31 July 2026, new mandatory co-payment functionality has been incorporated into the NCS claim process, to enable the auto-calculation of a parental co-payment.
The change will mean any service creating a new, or editing an existing, NCS claim from today will be asked to complete a small number of additional data fields, prior to the submission of a claim. There will be no requirement for services to retrospectively update existing NCS claims submitted before 31 July with co-payment information. However, if an existing claim is edited from today, e.g. to add or edit claimed hours, you will be prompted to complete the new co-payment fields.
The co-payment information is vital in order for the Department of Children, Disability and Equality (DCDE) to understand how the NCS is contributing to delivering the Programme for Government commitment that parents will pay no more than €200 per month for early learning and childcare. It is recognised the change introduces additional data entry requirements, however this will provide evidence that is critical to enable future policy change.
The new co-payment functionality has been designed to support you in the calculation of parental co-payments. The new functionality will:
- Auto calculate a parent’s weekly co-payment, taking into consideration changes to education stages, increases in subsides, variations in NCS claimed hours at a weekly level e.g. term time and non-term time and where applicable, incorporate ECCE subsidies and service discounts.
- Allow you to provide fee related information in one of two ways; via choosing pre-existing information contained in the fee table, or via manually typing in the information.
- Provide two printout summaries of calculated co-payments, one in PDF and the other in CSV.
Online training and guidance
The Early Years Hive is also now updated with a number of support resources:
- Recorded webinar of co-payment functionality training: Click here
- PowerPoint slides from co-payment functionality training: Click here
- Co-payment questions and answers: Click here (link not working)
- How-to video: Click here
- How-to guide: Click here
- Co-payment functionality infographic: Click here
For additional support, your local City/County Childcare Committee (CCC) will be available to assist. You can find information on your local CCC here.
The Early Years Provider Centre (EYPC) will also be on hand to offer any practical support that may be needed.
For EYPC support, you can raise a request on the Early Years Hive using the following categories:
- Programme: NCS
- Request Type: Registrations
- Request Type Details: Claim
- Summary: Co-payment functionality
Regards,
The Early Years Team
