Today the childcare sector had a National Walk Out in protest to the government’s underfunding in this year’s budget and previous budgets. The Level of investment in Early Years in wholly inadequate and we needed to make the government listen. Early years educators have to have a qualification to work in childcare and do an amazing job at educating and caring for children in our society. We deserve recognition for this. The average wage is only 10.21 Euro Per Hour and most are only on 38-week contract making it impossible for anyone to get a loan or a mortgage. We are currently facing a staffing crisis as qualified, good quality people are leaving this field as they find it impossible to stay in it with the conditions. It’s simply not feasible with the low wages and short-term contracts.
Our main income comes from the ECCE Scheme which is completely funded by the government so we are stuck with rising costs of rent, utilities, resources, insurance etc and they are not increasing the funding. Childcare Providers feel held to ransom because if we don’t accept the contracts of ECCE etc. we have no business but we have no say in what cost this is. We do not want to put the cost on to families who already struggle with childcare costs as it is.
The walkout was a collaborative action taken after discussion with myself and the team members. We were very aware that we didn’t want to inconvenience families but we had to make a stand against this exploitation of our profession. We decided to limit any inconvenience and we closed 1 hour early. We felt we had the support of most parents as I think most parents do value the work that we do with their children. Currently, the government invest 0.01 % of GPD in childcare which is the lowest in the EU. We want to deliver a quality childcare service that is affordable to parents and we need the government to invest more!! #EYWalkwith us