‘It’s impossible to get staff’: Childcare sector remains in crisis, says preschool manager

When Eilish Balfe faced challenges hiring staff for the Happy Days Community Preschool centre in Ratoath a few years back she remembers thinking that things on the recruitment front just couldn’t get any worse. A cost-of-living crisis later and, despite the supports provided to the sector by Government last year, she now believes she was wrong.

“We’re constantly looking for staff but the last time I advertised I got only two CVs back; one of those had no qualifications at all and the other didn’t have what you need to work here with us. It’s just impossible to get staff.

“People look at the pay rises that staff got last year and see that as progress, and it was, but I’ve been working in the sector for 15 years, managing for 10, and that was only the second pay rise I’ve had. Then, when it came, the cost-of-living crisis came too so the money was sort of given with one hand and taken with another.

“People still feel they are terribly poorly paid. The living wage is what, €13.85 but our educators are coming in on €13.”

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Just over a third of staff in the sector have a degree or higher and many are now looking at the better pay and conditions available to them if they choose to work in other roles, like special needs assistants (SNAs) in schools. “The pay is better, they get increments every year and their job is pensionable once they are made permanent so it’s an increasingly attractive option,” she says. “I deal with people all the time who tell me ‘I love working with my smallies but I need to get a mortgage and I can’t do that in this job’.”

Talks about pay are due to resume at the Joint Labour Committee on pay on Tuesday but the prospects of an agreement will not have been helped by the doubts cast by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar in recent days on the scale of additional funding to be committed to the sector by Government in this year’s budget.

Parents, she says, will be concerned too after having been promised substantial additional funding in this year’s budget.

“The impact of last year’s supports were really appreciated by parents but they are certainly expecting more. And it will be women who are hit hardest. Until we have a proper public model, we will always have an equality issue in employment.”