Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the concerns raised by Deputy Mitchell, which I share. What the report demonstrates is that the fees have increased but only by 2% this year compared to 4% the previous year so that demonstrates that we are monitoring it and asking the providers to pay attention to it. Second, as the Deputy knows, because of the lack of investment for so many years, given that costs are going up, childcare providers are allowed some reasonable increase in fees and I think a 2% increase is reasonable. The other thing the Pobal sector profile demonstrated is that the average rate of pay has gone up - not significantly but it is going up so it is important to attend to that. What we do not yet know is how the significant increase in ECCE capitation that I brought for this year will, hopefully, be passed on to staff. We will record and monitor that and, hopefully, we will see their pay go up.

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