Early Childhood Education & Care

Our plan for a universal system of affordable, accessible, and quality public childcare covering both early childhood education and school age care.

Our mission is the delivery of a universal, publicly provided system of early childhood education and care (ECEC) with a guaranteed place for every child that needs one, where costs are capped for parents and professional staff are valued and paid properly.

We call for a publicly provided childcare system, and a cap on childcare fees for parents of €200 per child per month. We will value professionals, support the rollout of ECEC and school age care, and invest in equality and inclusion for children with disabilities and those from disadvantaged areas.

1. A Public Childcare System to deliver Early Childhood Education and Care.

Provide 6,000 new public childcare places a year across an average of 100 new services with an average of 11 staff per service, building this up every year. This will cost about €53m a year. Over five years operating costs would increase to €300m with 30,000 places.

In an average setting there would be 6 places for children aged 0-1 and 10 places for children aged 1 to 2 years old. This is based on a costing from the Department of Children (appended below).

Initial rollout would be done through ETBs, and new locations will be identified through existing publicly owned sites and buildings in the education sector and local authorities. Some ETBs already host community creche’s. They have payroll and admin/corporate services that can help get a new public service up and running quickly.

We will map where demand is highest, and where there is a shortage of places, and responsibility for the public system will eventually move to a new national agency for early years education and school age care.

We will invest in building new facilities and co-locate where possible with new and existing schools. At least €70m total a year will be provided to fund a capital building programme.

2. What about existing childcare services?

We will provide a ‘childcare in situ’ scheme for those who want to join the public model. We provide €7m initially (to cover 10 services a year) but would expand this in line with demand. This will allow the State to take over the operation of existing services that wish to transfer to the public scheme or buy out those that indicate their intention to close due to retirement or withdraw from core funding. It provides for the Donagh O’Malley/Niamh Breathnach moment for early years education.

There are also many smaller ECCE pre-schools who may wish to join the public scheme or whose owners want to retire. These will be either taken over as described and expanded or merged into other new public service locations. Labour will provide a statutory right to a place on an ECCE scheme as the first step to a universal guaranteed place for every child.

3. Cap Costs for Parents

For the last two years Labour has called for a monthly cap on childcare costs of €200 per child. This is equivalent to €50 a week or €10 per day. Other parties have now caught up with us. This will bring costs closer to the European average and is part of the transition to a public system.

4. Professional Pay

In the short-term Labour will increase ringfenced core funding to guarantee a minimum €15 per hour rate for educators with additional increases across other grades.

Salaries must also recognise experience and qualifications. In the public service salaries would initially be paid through the ETB at existing JLC/market rates until negotiated pay scales for a new category of public employee can be established.

5. Inclusion and Equality

Labour will invest in the Access and Inclusion model and expand it so supports are available to children at both early years and school age care. We will expand Equal Start (DEIS for early years) as the phased plan sets out.

Providing a universal public childcare system of early years education and care co-located with schools will boost integration and inclusion for children with additional needs by aiding in the better coordination and future planning of special educational needs.