What we do

Tusla Early Years Inspectorate promote the safety, quality of care and the support of children in early year’s services.

We do this by:

Assessing applications for registration
Inspecting registered services. Inspections are nearly always unannounced (no advance notice is given).
Each service receives a report following the inspection. This report is published.

Tusla - Child and Family Agency has responsibility for promoting and monitoring the safety and quality of care and the support of children in early year’s services.

We do this by ensuring that Tusla registered early years services comply with the relevant laws and Regulations.

Relevant regulations and legislation

Child and Family Agency Act 2013

Part 12 of the Child and Family Agency Act 2013 is the legislative basis for regulation of early years services.

Regulation

It is the duty of every person carrying on a preschool service to take all reasonable measures to safeguard the Health, Safety and Welfare of the children attending the service and to comply with the following regulations:

Quality and Regulatory Framework.

If you would like more detailed information on what services are required to do to comply with early years regulations see Tusla’s Quality and Regulatory Framework which describes in plain English the regulatory requirements.

You can download the Tusla Early Years Inspectorate 'Who we are and what we do' leaflet here
Cé muid féin agus cád a dhéanaimid

Department of Education inspections of early years services

The Department of Education conducts education focused inspections of early years services in receipt of funding from the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth.

Since 2016, Early Years Education Inspections have been carried out in early years services participating in the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Programme.

Early Years Education Inspections evaluate the quality of the nature, range and appropriateness of the early educational experiences for children participating in the ECCE Programme.

The early years educators and the owners/managers are then provided with feedback on the quality of educational provision in the setting and advice as to how educational provision in the setting can be developed further or improved.

More information on these inspections can be found on the Department of Education Early years Education Inspections website and inspection reports can be accessed on the Department’s Early Years Inspection reports webpage.

We have jointly developed a leaflet which provides information on the work of the two inspectorates.

Inspections of Early Learning and Care settings - Information leaflet for parents.

This leaflet provides information on the different types of inspections and others types of work carried out by the Department of Education (DE) and Tusla Early Years Inspectorate.

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