Thousands of families to lose €12 a week for months with new childcare subsidy scheme

It has emerged that thousands of families will miss out on up to €12 a week, possibly for months over problems with the government's new childcare subsidy scheme.

While every family with children under the age of three will get the universal payment from September, some 9,000 who would be entitled to an extra subsidy will miss out.

The government is blaming a delay with a new IT system and the fact it will not have passed legislation for revenue to share data with the department of children.

Children's minister Katherine Zappone says families at the higher end of the lower income group will lose out until they fix this:"Part of the challenge there is the sharing of information between Minister Varadkar's department, the department of social protection and also the revenue commissioners information on income and making that to come together in the background in terms of that IT system.

"We are still working on that, there are lots of issues relating to the legislation for that."