More than €100 million in ring-fenced funding should be allocated to the childcare sector so as to improve pay rates and attract staff, according to Siptu which also wants the Government to explore providing services directly in areas where chronic shortages persist.
In its pre-budget submission on the sector to be published on Tuesday, the union, which represents about 6,000 workers in the sector, calls for more transparency on pay rates, significantly improved minimum rates and enhanced premiums for qualified staff.
The union says high turnover among staff, put at up to 25 per cent, is an ongoing problem in large part because there are better-paid options like special needs assistant relatively easily available.
At present, the minimum hourly rate for an educator in the sector is €13.65, or 95 cent above the minimum wage. The basic rate for a graduate manager is €18.11 although many providers say they pay significantly above these minimum rates.
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A survey of staff in the sector conducted by Siptu earlier this year found services having to close rooms because of staff shortages with children and other staff all being impacted by the situation.
It suggested 95 per cent of staff in the sector are only able to “make ends meet” with “difficulty”’ or “great difficulty”.
The scale of the investment being made by the Government in childcare provision at present – put at about €1.1 billion per annum – is acknowledged but the union argues that, in percentage terms, this is half the EU average. It says it needs to be substantially further increased with €111 million of the additional funding used to target the development of conditions that would provide for the retention of staff.
The union also wants to see Government action on anomalies which have emerged with regard to the fees charged to parents by different providers since core funding was introduced.
The issue has arisen where existing services in receipt of Government funding have been obliged to maintain existing fees, some of which were set well before the pandemic, while newly established settings can charge whatever they want.
Longer-established operators claim they lose staff to these new services which can afford to pay more while also reinvesting profits in facilities.
The union is also making a case for the Government to look at entering the sector as a provider with a new publicly backed company having the potential, it says, to “target areas where there is full capacity or undersupply” and take over services where a decision has been taken to close.
The Department of Children acknowledges there are shortages of places across the sector and that these can be acute in particular areas for different reasons. Parents of young children speak in some instances of having to wait up to two years to get children into their local creches.
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