Childcare: Motion Seanad Éireann — 2026-09-23 ============================================================ Pauline Tully (SF), Cultural and Educational Panel Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire. I welcome the opportunity to speak on this motion. Childcare is extremely important. Early years and school-aged childcare are fundamental to a child's development, to family well-being and to the social and economic life of our society. It needs to be a service that is accessible, affordable, sustainable and of the highest quality. There are a number of different points that deal with different issues here. I will look at affordability first. There is a commitment in the programme for Government to reduce the cost of childcare to €200 a month. I think Sinn Féin was the first party to bring forward this proposal prior to the most recent election. This was also committed to by the Government parties, which is very welcome, but we have not got to that point yet and we need to. I recognise that some families are only paying that or less but many families are paying a lot more. It can be like a second mortgage for them, so that needs to be addressed first. Affordability is one thing, but availability is another. If you cannot avail of a place, the amount of money does not matter. We have up to 46,000 children under the age of three waiting for a place. I have had a mother in tears on the phone to my office because she could not get a childcare place for her child and could not return to work. I was talking to another woman who was a special needs teacher who, when her last child was born, ended up giving up her job for three years. Her child was three before she could access a childcare place and she is now trying to return to work, but there are issues there because she is at a financial loss; she has been out of work for a few years. You also lose experience and gaining seniority in your workplace. Again, it is mostly women this affects. I am not saying it is all women, but it is mostly women. The main issue affecting availability is recruitment and retention. We need to see much better pay for our early years educators because many of them are highly qualified with level 7 or 8 degrees, yet they are getting barely above the minimum wage. I welcome the increase announced in the minimum rates of pay for educators. However, it is not good enough that some employers have delayed this for months. We need to see an improvement in and a more stable level of pay because people who are working in this sector are leaving it to go into jobs as SNAs or teachers because of better pay and better conditions, as well as more job security which we all need in this day and age with the cost of living and difficulties in acquiring a mortgage to obtain housing. We also need to see better conditions for our early school educators. Continuous professional development, CPD, is so important. Many of our educators have to access that CPD in their own time or at their own cost. I recognise the provisions included within core funding but many providers do not recognise that as such and use it for general administration time, so staff do not see it. It should not be an additional or optional element of the system. I really think it benefits our children if our staff within that sector receive continuous professional development on an ongoing basis, which leads to a much better quality service for all our children. I would also love to get an update on the progress of the development of the State-led services. It says in the motion that "the State is directly building and acquiring childcare facilities for the first time", which I welcome. It was also announced in last year's budget, so I would like to know where those facilities are. How many facilities have been built or acquired, and when will they be operational? How many children will be facilitated in those facilities? The motion also mentions "the prioritisation of co-location for all new school building projects, with the primary school and childcare facility located on the one campus". I think that makes absolute sense and would lead to better communication and co-operation between the two sectors, which is not happening at the moment. Again, it is something we need to be looking at. In fact, there needs to be a plan for the future of childcare. I met with Early Childhood Ireland earlier today and there is a quote on the back of their literature which says, "If you want to understand the future of a country, do not start in its universities. Start in its kindergartens, creches and nurseries." That is very important. Our education needs to start there and it needs to be of quality and properly supported. I would really like to see a completely State-led service, similar to our primary school system where the State owns the buildings, pays the educators and ensures there is a quality service provided to our children. If our children were going into primary school and teachers were leaving every second week because they were moving to a different sector due to pay and conditions, there would be uproar. We need the same situation within our early education sector so that our children receive the education on a continuous basis from someone they are familiar with. After-school care is also very important, but the ratio for after-school care is 1:12. We have an increased number of children with additional needs. They are maybe coming from a special class in a primary school where it is a ratio of one teacher and two SNAs to six children. They are then expected to go into a setting where there is only one person to 12 children. I know that when the Minister visited the community crèche in my locality last year, this was raised with her at the time. There was a parent there who had twins who were in the local school in a special class and she needed after-school care. The facility was reluctant to take the twins, not because it did not want to help, but because it felt it could not keep them safe with that ratio. I have spoken to other providers who feel the exact same. This is an issue that needs to be addressed. We have AIMs but we do not have anything in the after-school facilities. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-09-23/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:49+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-09-23