Clare TD has 'serious concerns' over crisis state of childcare

INDEPENDENT TD for Clare Violet-Anne Wynne has raised serious concerns about the recruitment and retention crisis in the early years childcare sector.

This follows a meeting in Leinster House before the recess with the Federation of Early Childhood Providers and a cross-party group of deputies. The meeting heard from an early years provider from Shannon who will have to close because of the prohibitive cost of utility bills and staff. The business has found profit is rapidly decreasing due to high costs.

Speaking from Kilrush this week, the Clare deputy said; "The core funding has been devised and administered in a way that means that the small businesses are now operating at a loss. They are worse off under the new scheme."

Deputy Wynne claimed that over 70 childcare settings have closed down in the last year and that "this trend will continue and may even ramp up in the coming months."

"If we continue to see this number of closures, it is without a doubt going to add chaos to parents’ lives," she continued. "This will in turn prevent or further restrict those parents and in particular the woman from going back into the workforce themselves. This is of critical concern. We need to as a society to be progressing and ensuring equal access and rights but this failure to act by Government tells me that they have their priorities in disarray. They are leading us with regressive politics that will have detrimental effects.”