Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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1831. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth if she is aware of a promise made by former Minister of State at a visit to a disability services provider (details supplied) in June 2023 to fund €200,000 for adult day care services and €150,000 to fund respite services, if there is any plan to fulfil this promise; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [19264/25]

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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As the Deputy will be aware, my Department provides funding to the HSE to deliver specialist disability services either directly or via Section 38 and Section 39 Voluntary Organisations. The Department does not have any funding or governance relationship with the S38s and S39s.

It is important to note that, while the strategy, policy direction and overall allocation for the sector is set at Ministerial level, funding allocations to individual providers or under HSE managed grant schemes is an operational matter for the HSE as the funding authority.

As this question refers to service matters, I have asked the Health Service Executive (HSE) to respond to the Deputy directly, as soon as possible.

Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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1832. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth with regard to the 291 services that had a 80% staff turnover rate in 2023/24 (details supplied), the profile of these services in terms of size (small medium, large), ownership type (private or community) and service type (sessional, part-time, full-time), in tabular form. [19266/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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Although the most recent Annual Early Years Sector Profile data 2002/23 shows that 291 out of 3,996 of early learning and care and school-age childcare services had an annual staff turnover rate of 80% or more, this represents 7% of all services. The national average staff turnover rate for 2022/23 was 24.5% down 0.2% on the 2021/22 turnover rate of 24.7%. The data shows that 29% of the 24.5% turnover rate is due to staff moving from one service provider to another.

Levels of staff turnover within early learning and care services are linked to pay and conditions. While Government is the primary funder of the sector as a whole, the State is not an employer of staff and neither I, nor my Department, set wage rates or working conditions.

The Joint Labour Committee process is the formal mechanism by which employer and employee representatives can negotiate minimum pay rates for early learning and care services, which are set down in law through Employment Regulation Orders.

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 €15m 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.

A longer-term workforce strategy for the sector is in place: "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 table below sets out additional information requested:

• The data to calculate the turnover rate was taken from the Annual Early Years Sector Profile (AEYSP) 2022/2023 survey. There were 3,996 services for whom the turnover rate was calculated.
• The turnover rate is calculated by dividing the number of staff that left the service in the previous 12 months by the total number of staff and expressed as a percentage. If the sum of vacancies and staff that worked in a service less than one year is greater than the number of staff that left in the last 12 months, the number of staff who left the service in the last 12 months is substituted in this calculation by the number of staff that worked in the service for less than one year. This substitution is made to differentiate between staff turnover and expansion. The turnover rate is calculated only for staff working with children.
• The response is based on reported figures. The response rate for the AEYSP 2022/23 was 88.6%.
• Under a service type, other combinations include services that offered, for example, full day and part time care, or sessional and part-time care etc.