Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Deputy. The annual early years sector profile survey does not collect staff retention data specifically. However, it does record data on staff turnover. Data from this survey shows that, over the period from 2019 to 2023, staff turnover rates ranged from 23% in 2019 to 24.5% in 2023. The 2023 data shows that almost one third of the turnover rate is due to staff moving from one provider to another. Staff turnover is linked to pay and working conditions. While the Government is the primary funder of the sector, the State is not an employer of staff and neither I, nor the Department, as I have said previously, set pay or working conditions.

The joint labour committee process is the formal mechanism by which employer and employee representatives can negotiate minimum pay rates for the sector, which are set down in law through employment regulation orders.

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Outcomes from the joint labour committee process are supported by Government through core funding, which has seen its allocation increase from €259 million in year one to €350 million for the coming programme year 2025-26.

As many Deputies have referred to, an additional €45 million is now ring-fenced in the coming year to support employers in meeting the costs of further increases to the minimum rates of pay. This allocation is conditional on updated employment regulation orders. Officials from my Department continue to discuss issues of recruitment and retention with stakeholders through a subgroup of the early learning and childcare stakeholder forum. The general consensus of the subgroup is that pay and working conditions are a significant barrier for recruitment and retention. In addition to ring-fenced funding to support improvements in pay and working conditions, some outcome actions from the subgroup include the importance of introducing the student fast-track process for recognition of studies to work in services out of term, and the assessment of unfinished qualifications, whereby people who may have started a relevant qualification but did not get to finish it can have completed work assessed for meeting qualification requirements.

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