Fewer childcare places will be available unless the Government announces a big budget funding boost, according to the boss of a major provider.
Tigers Childcare CEO Karen Clince said a Government promise to cut childcare fees to €200 a month cannot come at a cost of fewer places and declining quality of care.
Ms Clince called for a 20pc increase in the government’s Core Funding scheme in the budget. She wants investment to rise by €96m, from €480m to €576m.
She welcomed recent comments by Children’s Minister Norma Foley that she is looking for the maximum reduction in childcare costs possible in what must be a “breakthrough budget” for parents.
A Department of Children spokesperson said the government has substantially increased investment in the early learning and childcare sector through Core Funding. He said a total of over €1.7bn has been allocated to the scheme since its introduction in 2022.
He said this includes supports specifically designed to improve workforce pay and sustainability of services while improving affordability and accessibility for families and quality for children.
“In the context of Budget 2027 and wider work underway to deliver on commitments in the Programme for Government, there is a commitment to further increasing public investment and to ensuring that investment continues to make progress on all of these fronts while ensuring value for taxpayers money is achieved,” he said.
Ms Clince said there is a need for a fairer system of controlling fees, which she claimed were frozen at comparatively low levels under the terms of the Core Funding scheme.
“Everyone shares the same objective of making high-quality childcare more affordable for families,,” she said.
“We have spent much of the past year talking directly to Government and the Oireachtas about the pressure services are under. We see it every day in the challenge of retaining experienced staff, keeping rooms open and absorbing costs that continue to rise while our income remains constrained.
“The Government’s commitment to €200 childcare is absolutely the right ambition for families.
“But it will only work if the state funds the true cost of delivering it. Affordability cannot be achieved by simply transferring more of that cost onto providers.”
Tigers Childcare employs more than 640 people, caring for more than 3,500 children.
Ms Clince said an underfunded model would affect children, parents and educators. and called for a national pay scale for early years educators.
“If the funding model encourages services to operate at the lowest possible level, we risk creating a race to the bottom and quality will become harder and harder to sustain,” she said.
“Experienced educators will continue to leave the sector, rooms won’t open because there aren’t enough staff, and parents will find that the childcare place they depend on is no longer available.”
She said she is not calling for unrestricted funding or the cost to be handed to parents.
“What we are asking for is a funding system that recognises the reality facing services that have been locked into lower fee levels while wages and every other major operating cost have increased,” she said.
“Parents should not be promised affordable childcare only to discover that there are fewer places available because services cannot afford to staff them.”