Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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274. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the full-year cost of increasing the wages across all grades of early years educators by €1.50 per hour [31086/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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I firmly believe the level of pay for early years educators and school-age childcare practitioners should reflect the value of their work for children, families, society and the economy.

Pay is one of a number of issues impacting the early learning and care and school-age childcare workforce. 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.

Investment in early learning and childcare is now at an unprecedented level, with public funding exceeding €1.37billion in 2025. As well as addressing affordability, this investment has served to improve accessibility, availability and the quality of provision

However, the State is not an employer of staff and neither I, nor my Department, 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.

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 1 to €350 million for the coming programme year 2025/2026.

An additional €45 million has been ringfenced in the coming programme year to support employers meet the costs of further increases to the minimum rates of pay conditional on updated Employment Regulation Orders.

On the basis of February 2025 data supplied by Partner Services taking part in Core Funding, the estimated costs to employers of raising all the minimum pay rates specified in the current Employment Regulation Order by €1.50 is approximately €67 million.

This figure represents the additional cost to employers of bringing staff, from their current wage or the minimum pay rates set out in the current Employment Regulation Orders, whichever is higher, up to the new pay rate set out in the Deputy's question.

In relation to the estimate above, the following should be noted :

• The cost estimate is based on staff who had an hourly wage recorded in service providers’ submissions for Core Funding, but the Core Funding data has been extrapolated to provide an estimate for all staff working in the sector.
• Cost estimate based on the most recent data available to the Department which was provided by service providers in February 2025.
• The estimated cost are for the additional cost to employers of bringing staff, from their current wage or the minimum pay rates set out in the first EROs, whichever is higher, up to the new pay rate as set out in the question and includes Employer costs of 23% for PRSI, sick pay, holiday pay and autoenrollment pensions.
• Calculations are based on wage-data available at a point in time. Some services may have increased wages more recently, which would reduce the cost to services of moving from current wage-rates to the propose wage rates in the question.
• The cost estimates only relate to staff and managers covered by the current EROs, i.e. the estimates exclude the cost of ancillary staff.
• The cost estimates do not attempt to account for the potential cost implications for the wages of staff who are currently earning more than the increased rates above current ERO minimum rates.
• It should be noted that the figure above is the additional cost to employers rather than the additional costs to the State. Core Funding offers a contribution to staff costs. The €331m allocated for Core Funding may already support some employers to pay wage rates above ERO minimum rates.