Paul Lawless (Mayo, Aontú)
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134. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth how she plans to improve retention and quality in early years education, considering early childhood educators have had to fight for wages and conditions in the sector that are unsustainable. [7895/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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First 5, the whole-of-Government strategy for babies, young children and their families, recognises that the workforce is at the heart of high-quality early learning and care.

In a very competitive labour market and with low levels of unemployment, recruitment and retention is a challenge for all employers, especially in low-paid sectors.

I acknowledge that many early learning and care and school-age childcare services report staffing challenges 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.

The most recent published data from the Annual Early Years Sector Profile Survey shows staff turnover for the sector is at 24.5%, however it is estimated at approximately 1/3 of staff leaving services are doing so to move to another service. Notwithstanding this, the data from that survey also shows that the workforce in the sector continues to grow, increasing by 8% over a 12-month period.

Pay is one of a number of issues impacting staffing levels and the level of pay for early years educators and school-age childcare practitioners does not reflect the value of their work for children, families, society and the economy. As the State is not the employer of staff in the sector, neither I nor my Department can set wage levels or determine working conditions for staff in the sector.

However, in line with a commitment in the previous Programme for Government, there is a formal mechanism established, through the independent Joint Labour Committee process, by which employer and employee representatives can negotiate terms and conditions of employment including minimum pay rates for different roles in early learning and care and school-age childcare services.

Outcomes from the Joint Labour Committee process are supported by the Government through the Core Funding scheme, which has an allocation for this programme year (2024/2025) of €331 million. In Budget 2025, an additional €15 million was secured specifically to support employers meet the costs of further increases to the minimum rates of pay. This allocation, which is conditional on Employment Regulation Orders being negotiated by the Joint Labour Committee, translates into full year costs of €45 million for programme year 2025/2026.

My Department also continues to deliver on a longer-term workforce strategy for the sector, 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 and one of the five "pillars" of Nurturing Skills, commits to supporting recruitment, retention and diversity in the workforce, and includes actions to raise the profile of careers in the sector.