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12th April 2024
02:54pm BST
The supply currently does not meet the demand, and new research has shown that some parents are left waiting as long as three years for a creche place.
A nationwide survey published by the Irish Independent involved 220 creches around the country and it found that just 35% of areas currently have creche places available.
The statistics show the urgent need for action as some parents admitted to contacting creches from the moment they have a positive pregnancy test.
Tigers Childcare CEO, Karen Clince, spoke to Newstalk on Tuesday and said the only solution involves Government improving pay and conditions for childcare workers.
She claimed that the only way they can improve the pay of their employees is to either hike fees - which are already extortionate for parents - or the government needs to increase subsidies.
“We've had a freeze on our fees since 2019 and as you can imagine, for all of us, the cost of living has gone up since then,” she explained.
“There's a real crisis there.”
Tigers Childcare CEO, Karen Clince
Clince went as far as to say that as their profit margin continues to decrease, it’s becoming more and more difficult to pay colleagues any more than they’re already on.
“So as providers, actually, our profit margin is reducing and reducing, meaning that we actually can't afford to pay colleagues more,” she said.
“[Our margins] are really very tight.Our margins have been squeezed by about 5% in the last two years.
“So there are huge sustainability issues as well and that's causing an access problem, that's causing this issue because services are closing down.”
As a result, the Tigers Childcare CEO says places are taking on less numbers of children and are reducing their age brackets as a means of cutting corners to survive this crisis.
“They're reducing the amount of children they're taking [and] they're reducing the ages of children they're taking, because they're having to make decisions around sustainability rather than, you know, supporting families.
“There's a real crisis there.”
Despite these difficult challenges, Ms. Clince said she is confident that if the government are willing to make changes to help the sector, they will have a bright future.
“We've excellent Government policy and we just need the funds to be able to support it and I think Government are starting to see that,” she said.
“I am optimistic that Government will do this, but it needs to happen quickly because otherwise we won’t have places for children and we won’t have colleagues staying in the sector.”
