SIPTU has warned that Ireland is “sleepwalking into a corporate Early Years system” and has called on the Government to directly fund the wages of educators and managers in the sector.
Delegates at the SIPTU Public Administration and Community Division Biennial Delegate Conference in Galway today (Friday, 23rd October) backed an emergency motion warning that a continuing recruitment and retention crisis, low pay and increasing corporate investment in the sector required a fundamental change in how Early Years services are funded.
Moving the motion, Early Years Educator and SIPTU activist Lynnette Monk said: “This is not babysitting. This is education. This is professional work. Yet an Early Years Educator can currently earn just €15 an hour. Why are the people educating our youngest children still not recognised and paid as professionals?
“Reducing childcare fees for parents is important, but affordability is meaningless if there are not enough educators and managers to provide the service. We cannot keep pouring public money into a system while educators struggle to make ends meet and community and smaller providers struggle to survive. Professional educators deserve professional pay and conditions.”
Monk added: “For our educators, for our children, for our families and for our communities, it is time for the Government to take the bold step of directly funding professional wages in Early Years.”
Seconding the motion, SIPTU activist Avril Green warned: “Ireland is sleepwalking into a corporate Early Years system and the Minister for Children needs to wake up to what is happening.”
Highlighting the sale this year of Tigers Childcare, one of the largest providers in the State, to UK childcare group Kids Planet Day Nurseries in a deal backed by private equity investment, Green said: “There is serious investment money moving into Irish childcare. There is money available to buy services.
There is money available for corporate chains to expand. There is money available to generate returns for investors. However, when Early Years Educators and managers ask to be paid as professionals, we are told the money isn’t there.
“We cannot allow ownership and control of essential childcare infrastructure to become increasingly concentrated in large corporate groups while the workforce delivering the service remains underpaid.”
SIPTU Sector Organiser, Clem Shevlin, said: “Public investment should deliver public value: professional wages, sustainable careers, affordable childcare and high-quality services. Without educators, there are no childcare places. Without managers, there are no services. Without decent wages, there is no sustainable Early Years system.”