Quick summary
- NCS provides two subsidy types: universal (all families, not means-tested) and income-assessed (means-tested, higher value).
- The universal subsidy is 50c an hour, up to 45 hours a week, for children aged 24 weeks to 15 years.
- The income-assessed subsidy pays up to €5.10 an hour, currently for households under the reckonable income threshold, rising from €60,000 to €68,000 from 31 August 2026.
- Subsidised hours are capped at 45 a week if parents are working, studying or training, or 20 a week if not.
- Parents apply directly through Pobal's NCS portal; the resulting CHICK code is what the provider uses to claim the subsidy.
Two subsidies, one scheme
The National Childcare Scheme, administered by Pobal on behalf of the Department of Children, Disability and Equality, provides financial support toward the cost of childcare for children aged 24 weeks to 15 years in a Tusla-registered service. It has two distinct components:
| Subsidy | Who qualifies | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Universal | All families, not means-tested | 50c/hour, up to 45 hours/week |
| Income-assessed | Reckonable household income under the current threshold | Up to €5.10/hour |
Every eligible child gets the universal subsidy by default. Families can additionally apply for the income-assessed subsidy, which pays substantially more, if their income qualifies.
Income thresholds are changing
The income-assessed subsidy currently applies where reckonable income is below €60,000 a year. From 31 August 2026, that threshold rises to €68,000, which will bring more families into eligibility, including some currently only receiving the universal subsidy. Providers should proactively flag this to families around that date, since a number of parents won't realise their eligibility has changed unless prompted.
Income is assessed against the relevant previous tax year (for the 2026/27 programme year, that's 2025), though a family can request assessment against the current year if they expect income to be significantly lower.
Hours: 45 or 20 a week
How many hours a family can get subsidised depends on their working status, not directly on income: up to 45 hours a week if the parent (or both parents, in a two-parent family) is working, studying or training, and up to 20 hours a week if not. Check this against a family's actual enrolment pattern: a mismatch between the hours a child attends and the hours their award covers is one of the more common billing queries services deal with.
CHICK codes
Once a family's NCS application is approved, they receive a CHICK code, a Childcare Identifier Code Key, unique to their award. They give this to you, and you use it to claim the subsidy on their behalf, reducing what they're billed. CHICK codes can expire or need renewal, and a lapsed code without a service noticing means a family gets billed the full rate unexpectedly. Track this proactively instead of discovering it at invoicing time.
Where NCS and ECCE meet
Many children use both schemes at once: ECCE for the free 15-hour preschool session, NCS for subsidised hours either side of it. These need to be tracked as separate, non-overlapping blocks of time in your attendance records. Claiming NCS subsidy for hours that were actually ECCE-funded is a common, usually unintentional, compliance issue.
Practical advice
- Keep a simple, visible record of each child's CHICK code, award hours, and renewal date, rather than relying on the family to notice and tell you when something changes.
- Proactively flag the 31 August 2026 threshold change to families who previously didn't qualify for the income-assessed subsidy. It's a genuinely useful thing to tell them, not a sales pitch.
- Reconcile award hours against actual attendance regularly, not just at year-end, so a mismatch is caught while it's still small.
- Keep ECCE and NCS hours visually distinct in whatever system you use, so nobody has to mentally separate them from a single combined attendance figure.
How Tot Tracker helps
Tot Tracker tracks each child's CHICK code, award hours and renewal status, calculates NCS-subsidised hours separately from ECCE hours in the same week, and flags where a child's attendance is heading toward the eight-week missed-hours threshold before it becomes a compliance issue for the family or the service.