Ms Sonya Duggan:

That is down to the stress of the over-burdensome administration we have.

We talk about the turnover of staff. That ultimately relates to the income we receive. All early childhood care and education scheme, ECCE, sessional services are already publicly funded. We are technically publicly owned. We are giving the best service we can. We have had one 7% increase in the past 13 years. Some services that did not sign up to core funding have lost the higher cap programme support payment. That means they have a reduction of €534 per child, as I do in one of my services. That is a lot of money. In one service that would have been €45,000 I would have got. The difference between what we received with higher cap and programme support payment versus core funding was a difference of approximately €3,000. Where was €3,000 extra going to pay the increased employment regulation order, ERO, levels last year? My staff would not have been on €15.50. Outside Dublin our rates are a lot lower. In rural Ireland our rates are much lower - by 40% in some cases. There is a different cost base. Every service model, no matter what way you want to put it, or what way the Department might like to say it wants one size fits all, you will not get a round peg into a square hole. Everybody has a different cost base. Capacity is obviously a massive issue across the sector. In the smaller services our core funding is lower. One childminder provider gets €6,000 in core funding. She is very worried, with the additional set of accounts we have been asked for, that will cost her another €1,500 minimum. How is she going to afford all of the increases?

For the rest of us, I did not sign up for core funding for one of my services. I increased my fees instead because I was very worried. I wanted to see where this was going. I did not want to lose autonomy over my business. I provide combined care, which includes sessional ECCE - which is free in the afternoons - full day care and part-time. We prioritise those places because I have full-time staff who want work 52 weeks of the year. My other service is full day care, but at least 85% are foreign, based on the logistics of where we are located and the cohort of children who attend our services. I have 19 children of different nationalities out of a class of 21. We have 16 children on the access and inclusion model, AIM. It is culturally diverse, but a lot of other issues come with that, which in reality the Department does not see. We spoke with Anne-Marie Brooks and were told that if we need additional staff to support our service in a room, because 90% of the children in the younger ECCE group are in nappies, that is our business decision to work from two to 22. If we want to employ more, they do not look at that. They just look at the regulations, rules, guidelines and costs. It is up to us to make that money work for us. With AIM, we have a child this morning who is pulling the inside of his nappy out and rubbing it in his face. The child needs support. The parents using our service need support. We are more than educators. We are social workers. We bridge the gap for every level of care those children need. In my service 25 years ago, we had a lot more interaction with our early intervention services. I could make a phone call and have support for that child in a matter of weeks. We now have no liaison at all with the early intervention teams. Our staff may be level 5, supporting our children on AIM, and some do not have the experience or expertise to support some of these children who are very high on the spectrum. We are doing the best we can.

We were receiving €16 per hour, which was thankfully increased through everybody lobbying for one due to the EROs coming in. We have to pay our costs and overheads - staff pay, sick pay and annual accrued leave, which is not paid for by the Department. We are paying our staff on ECCE models for a minimum 43 weeks in the year, and we are only being paid for 38. That is not significant. When you break down that €64.50 or €69, it was working out at €3.16 per hour, because all of our staff will get some sort of non-contact time, which we pay for. They are saying the core funding is the answer to our questions. The core funding is not the answer to our questions. The core funding delivers me €17.10 per child. They also say that from our 68 cent, 18 cent goes to administration. For me to pay even a €1 increase to my staff, I need 90 children at 18 cent for me to pay €16.20 per hour. That is to be inclusive of employer PRSI and everything else.

Let us be real here. My sessional services have 70 children between morning and afternoon. Our demographics in the area, and our birth rates are lower this year. I have been speaking to a lot of services that are facing the same. We are down income of 20 children. I still have 11 staff there. In my other service for full day care, we are down approximately 16 children from where we were last year. I have eight or nine staff employed there. Due to wages my ERO costs were up by €30,000. ERO was not going to cover that. They are talking about core funding as the magic number that is going to fix everything. It is not going to fix anything. You need to raise the capitation of ECCE, full stop. I am on €64.50 when 13 years ago I was on €90 per week. We are getting €69, but €64.50 is offset from the parents who are part-time and full day care. Where are we going? We have not moved with inflation. Nothing has been index linked. It is not acceptable. We are being made out to be the bad guys. The amount of paperwork has more than quadrupled in recent years, especially the past three or four years since Covid. We talk about our employees. We want everything for our employees. We want the best for our employees in every respect.

However, we cannot do that on core funding. We cannot do that on the ECCE. We were better off before. I have 90% graduate staff. We were getting our €80.25 per child. Now, with core funding, we have €79, so I am still on less, even with core funding.