AS I SEE IT
BY MARIANNE HERON
If I were a working parent with crèche-going children, I would be praying for an available granny. Or maybe I would think of migrating to France where ecoles maternelles for three-t0-six-year-olds are State funded and free and crèches for under 3s are generously subsidised.
Headlines about threatened crèche closures are enough to set alarm bells ringing with parents already vexed by the Government’s failure to cap childcare costs at €200 a month, a promise made by Simon Harris pre-election. Members of the 1,400 strong Federation of Early Childhood Providers (FECP), representing one third of independent providers, are vexed also, to the point where they are threatening to close down.
The reason? Crèche owners find themselves between a rock and a hard place, caught between rising costs, like the rest of us, and fees fixed at the 2021 level under the terms of the Core Funding grant scheme, paid to reduce childcare costs. Childcare businesses have had to absorb increased costs for food, energy and wages and can no longer afford to do so. They are faced with Hobson’s Choice: either they quit the scheme and raise fees, upsetting parents, or they shut down permanently or until their demands are met by the State.
This is only part of the childcare picture. Grannies – well grandparents – play a vital role, some putting in a full working week minding their children’s children. According to The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA ) carried out by Trinity, half of all grandparents are involved in childcare, with one in four of those minding for as much as 36 hours. Whether or not they get paid is up to the families involved but, arguably, the State could pay grandparents an allowance – after all they are saving the parents and the State money and allowing both parents to work.
Another part of the picture is that parents are subsidised for childcare costs to the tune of €2.14 an hour up to €20 under the National Childcare Scheme (NCS). Typically, fees to parents per child would now be around €300 a month or more in Dublin. There is also the Early Childhood and Education Scheme ( ECCE) scheme which is either free or subsidised according to means.
Owners belonging to Early Childhood Ireland, with 3,800 members, have their headaches too. Owner of Eden Childcare, one of many childcare options in Kilkenny, Aine Russell, explains that Eden has not raised its fees since 2017. Also, the NCS capitation scheme involves a huge amount of paperwork for creches ,which are inspected by different bodies including TUSLA, the Department of Education and Environmental Health. All childcare workers have to be qualified, while wages are low, which leads to staff shortages in a situation where some parents struggle to find childcare.
Aspects of the Core Funding scheme which FECP members feel are unfair are that creches, which were in business before 2021, have their fees set at pre-2021 levels, whereas those which started later can set their own level of post 2021 fees.
Also, the small increase granted towards staff wages doesn’t cover the costs including the upcoming auto-enrolment pension. Crèches have to ask the Department of Children for permission to increase fees. “The scheme isn’t working for anyone, not crèches, not parents and not staff,” says Elaine Dunne, Chair of FECP.
Does the Government look at the bigger picture, I wonder? True, childcare costs have reduced but they are now threatening to go up again for parents already struggling financially with the rising cost of living, the effects of the housing crisis and the absence of one-off subsidies in the 2026 Budget. Some – usually, mothers – may decide that it is not worth going out to work.
Meanwhile, couples are having fewer children; the birth rate is now below replacement rate and is set to drop further, leading to a demographic imbalance where the number of people at work to support the retired generation is set to halve. We then rely on immigrant workers to make up the shortfall.
Policy, not just in relation to crèches, but in work practices, play a part in couples’ decisions that it is just too damn difficult to have more children, just as other young people find that the housing crisis is driving them to migrate.
The crèche crunch though, can and should be easily fixed.
