The first time Adrianne Boyle was pregnant she didn’t even think to inquire about childcare until after her baby was born. Second time around, she says, she had learned her lesson. After her husband and mother, the next person she told she was pregnant, just nine weeks in, was the manager of her local creche. She’d be needing another spot. She got it but wasn’t first in the queue.
Before her three year old, Zara, was born, she says: “None of my friends really had kids. We’d had all the weddings, Covid hit, and everybody was beginning to start their families. But there was nobody to tell me: ‘Oh my God, childcare is going to be such a big issue.’
“When Zara born that April, I was thinking: ‘Right, I want to go back to work in a year so there’s plenty of time to get things sorted.’ It was only then, when I eventually did start asking, I realised there was a crisis. I felt I was a beggar, like I was asking the people to mind my daughter for free.”
Money was not the biggest issue at the time – Adrianne is a civil servant, her husband Ryan has a good job in tech – but they were saving for a deposit on a house and so money was a consideration.
[ Childcare price hikes threaten to wipe out increased State subsidies for parentsOpens in new window ]
When they found a place they liked, Naomi’s in Knocknacarra that charged €200 a week, they were happy. The only problem, however, was that the spot was only available for Zara in July and the couple spent a lot of time figuring out how they would bridge a three-month gap because not going back to work on schedule was not an option.
A temporary arrangement with a childminder plus some ducking and diving later, Zara started in the creche and loved it.
“But for months it was just all-consuming, the need to have something in place before I went back to work.”
When Cillian was on the way, she knew to move fast and got him a place that tied in with her maternity leave. However, when she was 38 weeks pregnant she went to collect Zara one day and was handed a letter saying the creche was closing four weeks later due to worsening staffing issues.
“I was just in shock,” she says. “There were 39 families affected and the parents all pulled together, there was a bit of a campaign with local politicians, but the worst thing was that at the same time we were all competing with each other for whatever other places there were in the area.”
After something of a scramble, a local Montessori said it could take the older kids including Zara and most of the younger ones went to a branch of a creche chain that was opening. There was huge relief among the parents even though the chain charged €350 per week, discounted for an unspecified period to €300.
Adrianne passed on it after securing a place elsewhere for Cillian but it will not be able to take the now four month old until next August, leaving another post maternity leave gap to be covered. Neither could it take Zara.
Ryan will get additional leave this time to cover some of it, she says, but the plan is far from complete at this stage and stress levels are soaring. Even then, her two children will need to be dropped and picked up from different locations.
“A lot has gone on and yet I still feel we are among the lucky ones because we always did find something. We now have a mortgage and we’ll need a new car but both places charge €200 per week, which after the Government schemes means each place costs us about €137 a week.
“We really do feel lucky but I will say ... I never knew how tough it was to be a working mother in this country. It’s like, it’s constantly doors closing. That’s what it feels like. And you’re always scrambling.”
Eimear Shannon, also in Galway, knows all about that sense of scrambling. She is a nurse in the Bons Secours while her husband, Emmet, works from home in the house they built near Moycullen.
They lived the other side of Galway City but knowing where they intended to end up well in advance, they approached a creche two years ago for her son Donagh, now three, and 18 month-old daughter Méabh, who was five months from being born at the time.
With the move completed but still waiting on the places, they were forced to commute across the city to their previous creche. “It was 35 minutes over there in the morning and 40 back until last month when the new creche could finally take the kids after two years waiting,” says Eimear.
Now, however, it has informed them it will pull out of the Government’s core funding scheme because it needs to increase prices in the face of rising costs.
The fees of crèches in the scheme are capped and though the Government is allowing some to apply to impose increases on parents. The process is ongoing and the numbers that will be allowed to charge more is undecided. Some leave to regain control over what they charge parents.
Eimear says she and her husband will now pay €1,600 or €1,850 per month in childcare, depending on which subsidies apply at given times, as opposed to the €1,100 they previously expected. Despite that, she is supportive of the operator.
“She said she couldn’t afford to run the business and from speaking to other mothers a lot of their crèches seem to be in the same position ... the one we left is up for sale now and this is with people waiting two years to get places.”
She believes funding needs to be increased to help with costs and more flexible services encouraged. “I don’t think we should be forcing toddlers to attend 40 hours but there are no part-time places in Galway. None.”
The element of outside control that comes with the department’s cash is the main reason Ena Downey, who owns Young World on Barton Road East in Dublin, decided against registering for core funding, she says.
In response to rising costs, she is increasing fees next month to €310 per week for a full-time child, although subsidies provided to parents under the National Childcare Scheme (NCS) and Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programmes mean they will pay about two thirds of that.
A quick calculation at the time found that signing up to core funding would have been worth about €50,000 a year to her business, which opened 32 years ago. There are 10 people employed at the creche, a mix of full and part-time, including herself, to cater for 27 children.
“It’s not about it being the Government, we welcome regulation, obviously,” she says. “But if anybody walked in off the street and said they’d give me €50,000 but contribute nothing else to the business while obliging me to call them a partner and imposing lots of restrictions on how I can do things, I’d say: ‘Absolutely no way.’”
Downey says she spends many unpaid hours on administration relating to the NCS and ECCE schemes to ensure parents get the fee subsidies the Government provides for them. “That’s to give my parents money off, it’s not for me; it is the balance of the payments that my parents owe me and I’m having to administer the schemes for the Government for free despite not signing up to core funding.”
Another price she pays for remaining outside the system is an exclusion from various other supports, including grants of different types, which are only available to those who sign up for core funding. It is, she claims, “coercion”.
“The impression I get is that there is a huge amount of income going into huge bigger chains, bigger services, and the smaller people like us are just closing, closing, closing because their heart’s not in it any more.”
A survey of industry body Early Childhood Ireland members released on Thursday suggested there were about 27,000 children on waiting lists for early learning and care places and about 3,000 vacant places.
The Department of Children’s latest figures show there was a net increase of 129 services last year. Though the rate of increase has slowed, it says, the overall total still grew by seven in the first half of 2024.
The department, which has dramatically increased spending on the sector in recent years, says 20 of roughly 4,300 withdrew from core funding while continuing to operate last year.
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