Fast 900 Kinderbetreuer sind gebilligt, die Gebühren trotz staatlicher Finanzierung zu erhöhen

Childcare providers which, as part of the Government’s core funding model, have been prevented from increasing their prices in recent years, can apply for a fee increase assessment if their fees were “frozen at a level that may not be sufficient to sustain their business, even with the increased funding available through core funding”.

The Department of Children told the Irish Examiner over 20% of providers had been granted an increase and that the number was higher than the previously reported 850, due to appeals.

Childcare worker here.
While its not good for parents already stretched pockets, services have been locked into fees set in 2020. Think of all the bills in your home that have increased: utilities, food, insurance being the biggest and highest increase. Those bills alone are massive in childcare. Temperature requirements especially those that operate sleeping rooms means either the aircon or heating is on all the time.
The new ERO rates while ABSOLUTELY needed to help teachers earn something still far from decent, have started to push staff into the higher PRSI employer rate which can vary from 3 to 30+ plus employees. The increase in employee statutory rights (eg sick leave, pension enrolment) is also hitting services. Again absolutely needed, but the fact remains its more expenses.
This is just a very small snapshot of why services need an increase on fees, none of which are covered by the current funding schemes in ECCE, Core funding or NCS.

There’s also a perception out there that NCs & Ecce is huge money. My service charges €175 p/w. When a parent gets ECCE &/or NCS they just replace a portion of the €175. I dont get more than the €175. The gov just pays the parents part of that instead.

Edit typo

Crèches on the subsidy scheme had been prevented from raising charges for a few years. So their core input costs were going up – wages, food, etc etc – while the price they could charge was not.

Running a crèche is an expensive business. When I see the operation my kids go into, I’m amazed they make a penny in profit. It’s a highly regulated people business, with staff everywhere you look, activities for the kids every day, and fed from morning till evening.

The issue isn’t that crèche operators need to charge more to cover all of this: it’s that the state doesn’t provide enough funding. I don’t particularly want a Crèche Service Executive / state run provider (“the CSE has issued an apology after twenty children were accidentally left out in the sun with no SPF”) but I think a model where the govt funds 100% of childcare, capped profits, and extends it to a universal right and expands it dramatically, is a direction we need to go.

It’ll be insanely expensive, but right now it’s an unequal system of haves and have nots. And fundamentally if we’re a country that requires two parent working families then the state has to support that. Children deserve the structured environment and all the developmental benefits that come with it, and families deserve the support, and the country itself needs a sustainable number of children being born to keep things going in future!

The current climate of the country means that childcare, which is a core need for almost every family in the country cannot operate to the benefit of everyone under a private model. There needs to be public operated childcare facilities that can offer it at an affordable cost, pay workers fairly and eat the cost of overheads without having to cut hours, close down or put the bulk cost back into the consumer.