In the five months since Emma Hendrick started to look for childcare in Sligo for her second daughter Lara (2) , so she can weigh up opportunities to return to work, the best she has been able to find is a combined 9¼ hours spread over three days each week.
“I only got most of those,” she says now, “because I accepted from 1.45pm to 4pm on Wednesdays.”
Some of the private operators she approached, she says, were full and a couple in the area were closing, limiting options and leaving other families, like her own, without childcare.
Hendrick will be in Dublin on Thursday to speak at a National Women’s Council (NWC) event to promote the a call by the organisation for a State-run childcare system.
A new civil society alliance, Together for Public, led by the NWC with 25 member organisations, is calling for the introduction of a public system of early childhood education and care to address the crisis in Ireland’s childcare system.
“There still seems to be a lot of problems with the current system, providers are unhappy with core funding and complain about red tape. What I’d like to see is a move to a State run system properly funded in which every child, and family, is guaranteed a place if they need it until they start in school,” Hendrick said.
Professor Mathias Urban, chair of Early Childhood Education and director of the Early Childhood Research Centre at Dublin City University, suggests the Government has already signed up to international agreements that recognise the rights of children to early education and care but continues to struggle to get a system capable of delivering the required services in place.
“We need a transition to a public system, which means several things ... It would mean a statutory right to a place in early childhood, education and care. It would mean that services are co-ordinated and regulated by a state agency.
“It would mean that this agency would pay the salaries of educators, and it would mean that there would be a much more hands on involvement in the system in terms of evaluation, co-ordination and forward planning.”
There would still, Prof Urban suggests, be a part to play for independent operators in service provision although he would like to see the exclusion of the larger chains which he contends take large sums in profit out of the system. The State would also ideally look to take direct control of services that were closing due to retirements or other factors while seeking to establish new services in areas that the market is not serving.
“There’s are some childcare deserts,” he says, “where the OECD and other organisations say that for a significant number of communities and families, there are simply no services available, they have to hope a private provider will set up business.
“Availability is particular problem for the most marginalised communities, the Traveller community, for instance, but it is a huge problem in large parts of rural Ireland and it is something that needs addressing urgently. That can be done in a much better co-ordinated system. That’s what we’re talking about.”
Prof Urban acknowledges he does not know how much would be required to fund such a system on an annual basis and detailed estimates are hard to come by, although the Department for Children is compiling more data on existing usage. The €1.1 billion it currently puts into the system is already accounted for by providers.
The NWC, however, wants a pilot programme established to see how a national public system might operate.
“Women are bearing the brunt of this crisis, with certain groups of women, like lone parents, migrant women, women in rural or disadvantaged areas, and mothers of children with additional needs, having particular accessibility and affordability issues,” says Eilish Balfe, NWC’s care officer.
“Core Funding and the National Childcare Scheme have both been a huge support, but at the end of the day it is public money going to the private, for-profit, sector. The only way to solve the crisis is by introducing a public system of early years education, so that fees are no longer volatile and every child is guaranteed a place, no matter their parents’ circumstances. We urgently need to see a commitment to this in the next programme for government.”
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