Childcare: Motion Seanad Éireann — 2026-09-23 ============================================================ Joanne Collins (SF), Agricultural Panel Yes, I know - shock, horror. It is not like me to stand up and not give out about something, but there is a twist near the end. We need to keep talking about childcare because there are still issues. We can keep working and working but there will always be. If it is not the affordable side, it will be the accessibility side. I can see it from all sides. I went through the childcare system with my own children. Fourteen years ago, I had to leave my job because I could no longer afford it. What I had to pay for my kids in childcare went above my salary. When I finally got to the point where they were old enough that the cost came down, I could not get a place. There is always going to be an issue for a family out there anyway. Regardless of whether we can get the cost down to what we want it to be, some families still probably will not be able to afford it. There are always going to be issues. However, the issue that is most pressing is definitely the accessibility issue at the moment. I think it comes down to the recruiting and retention of childcare workers. You have a level 8 childcare worker who does four years in college and then they see primary school teachers who are getting way above their salary. I think a primary school teacher probably comes out with about €40 an hour for the hours they work and early years educators on a level 8 come out with €17.50 or €18. There is a huge disparity. We can see why childcare workers after their level 8 are going to go for another year, do their Hibernia year and go into primary school teaching. We are losing childcare workers hand over fist. I am also the chairperson of a community-run crèche and the childcare workers in that crèche are paid over the minimum wage. They have their pensions. They have health insurance. They get their bonuses for not ringing in sick. They have all these little things. They get Christmas nights out. They get their end-of-summer party. That is all to keep the morale up. That is what is needed. For too long they have been treated like babysitters when they are not babysitters. They do such amazing work. We could not be here without them. People could not go to work without them, and we know the kids are being taken care of because they are so well qualified at what they do. It is not like 20 years ago when there were no qualifications and you put your child into what was called "playschool", and they were being minded by somebody down the road. There are qualifications at play here. They do an awful lot of work, and they are forever upskilling. We need to look at their pay and pay scale for morale and retention. Primary school education is competing against early years educators and I do not think there is proper parity when it comes to it. Primary school teachers are getting their summer off, Christmas off and they are getting mid-term breaks while early years educators are on half the wage and do not get any of that. We do need to make it more competitive or more palatable for them to go into that. They go into it for the love of it. They do not go in because it is easy. When you see them doing four years at college there is a love behind it. The only other critique I have is the national childcare scheme, NCS, hours. The way the NCS hours are done is penalising parents if they collect their children early because the childcare facility has to log their hours and if someone collects their child early, they do not get those NCS hours. The childcare facility is not going to take that hit. It is put on the parents. There are parents sitting outside crèches for an hour because they cannot go in yet because they are going to get charged if they go in and collect their child. A parent hanging around for an hour outside could be collecting the child early. That childcare facility could close an hour earlier if the kids go home an hour earlier and give the staff an extra hour off. There is a ripple effect to it. That definitely needs to be looked at. I do not think anybody, whether it is the facility or the parent, should be penalised for a child going home early. A child going home early is a really good thing. They get to spend more time with their parents. They get more time outside at home, playing XBOX or whatever it is they want to do. They are not being left there. --- 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