Kathleen Funchion (Carlow-Kilkenny, Sinn Fein)
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1238. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the average staff turnover rate in early learning and care services, broken down by service type (details supplied) and within each service type, by the size of providers, in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [17202/23]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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Many early learning and childcare services report staffing difficulties in relation to recruitment and retention. In general, staffing pressures in the sector are caused not by insufficient supply of qualified personnel, but by high levels of staff turnover.

Recruitment and retention difficulties are undoubtedly linked to pay and conditions. On 15 September 2022, the first ever Employment Regulation Orders for Early Years Services came into effect, setting new minimum hourly rates of pay. The Orders are being supported by Core Funding – which has an allocation of €259 million in its first year – to support amongst other things, improvements in staff wages, alongside a commitment to freeze parental fees and support sustainability of services. As announced in Budget 2023, the Core Funding allocation will increase by €28 million for the second year.

I have also committed to addressing other challenges which may impact on the recruitment and retention of staff in the sector. In December 2021, I published "Nurturing Skills: The Workforce Plan for Early Learning and Care and School-Age Childcare, 2022-2028". Nurturing Skills aims to strengthen the ongoing process of professionalisation for those working in the sector. One of the five "pillars" of Nurturing Skills comprises commitments aimed at supporting recruitment, retention and diversity in the workforce, and it includes actions to raise the profile of careers in the sector.

The below table shows average staff turnover rates for 2020/21 according to responses to the Annual Early Years Sector Profile reports, based on services that had stated 'Yes' to having staff vacancies in the survey. The data for 2021/22 is not yet available.

The methodology used to establish the turnover rate for each service involved factoring out any possible reduction or expansion in staff numbers. Four data types were used to calculate turnover as follows:

• Number of staff working in the service
• Number of staff who left in the past twelve months of the year in question
• Number of staff working in the service who had worked there for less than twelve months
• Number of staff vacancies at the time of completing the survey.

The overall average staff turnover rate in 2020/21 was 19% across all services that responded to the Annual Early Years Sector Profile survey. The table shows the breakdown by type and size of service. It should be noted that some services offer more than one service type e.g. full day and sessional, etc. In the data presented in the table, a service with a capacity of under 50 places is classified as small, a service with a capacity of 50–99 is classified as a medium service, and a service with a capacity of 100 or more places is classified as large.