Ms Marian Quinn:

The fee freeze has been significant.

It did come in at the time. Obviously, the logic was to bring it in quickly in order that providers would not increase fees. The presumption was that people would have increased fees in anticipation of it and would get a significant amount of money but the reality is some service providers, despite the fact that the EWSS was there, made a decision that they were going to increase their fees, which means there is a four or five-year difference in the cost base and being able to provide for this across services. That is really unequal. We find that the services which are struggling the most are the ones charging fees from back in 2017 or 2018 or even some further back than that. They were working to the market in their local economy regarding what the families were providing. They did not necessarily increase fees year on year as they decided things were a bit tough in the area and consequently, they would not increase them at that time. Now these providers are stuck at those rates but their costs are not stuck. Their costs have steadily increased for things like sick-pay leave or the very fact that the wages are having to increase because there is such a staffing shortage. Even without the money coming through the ERO, the services are having to increase fees anyway and then there are all the various different overheads. These providers are stuck back in 2017 regarding income and are now bearing 2023 costs. It is a huge difference. Talking in particular to service providers who have the baby and toddler rooms, they are looking at closing those rooms. Those rooms were always there or thereabouts. They may have lost on the baby room but might have broken even on the toddler room. Now they are loosing out on both the baby room and the toddler rooms, so they are gone.