Childcare services in Cork coming under pressure as three close their doors 

THREE childcare services closed their doors permanently in Cork at the end of December, leaving parents to find alternatives for this year.

Amanda Spiteri, founder of Ray of Sunshine, which provides after-school services across Ireland, closed facilities in Clogheen, Dripsey, and Kilmurry, as well as services in Wicklow and Dublin.

Ms Spiteri’s Cork services are three of many childcare facilities that have closed since the Government’s controversial Core Funding model was introduced in 2022.

Ms Spiteri labelled it “a mass culling”, and believes that policymakers do not want to save these services.

Funding

Core Funding is a grant to early learning and care (ELC) and/or school-age childcare (SAC) providers towards their operating costs. However, providers say they are not being funded correctly and are “chronically underfunded”.

While some parents understood why the Ray of Sunshine service had to close, many did not, Ms Spiteri said.

“The majority were very distressed, and there was a lot of anger directed towards me personally.”

“Someone called me and said that I personally was responsible for people losing their jobs because some parents would have to give up work without the services,” Ms Spiteri continued.

“I was threatened, but little did they know I hadn’t been taking a wage myself to keep the services going.

“School principals were also very upset with us, but they’re completely funded and still some of them are struggling, so how did they think we could do it?”

Protest

Many childcare providers in Cork and beyond closed in protest at Core Funding at the end of September, 2023, the week before Budget 2024 was announced, with thousands of providers and supporters gathering outside the Dáil.

Federation of Early Childhood Providers chairperson and The Irish SME Association secretary Elaine Dunne told The Echo that while additional funding was announced for the sector as part of the budget, this money is largely going towards cutting costs for parents, and very little of this money has gone to the providers themselves. “In the budget, we got an increase of four cent more per child, per hour, which doesn’t cover rising costs,” she said.

The issues are disproportionately affecting smaller services, which are largely located in rural areas where the population is less dense, she explained.

“You can be very sure that unless you have 50 children or more in your service, it is not viable,” said Ms Dunne.

Bodies such as Early Childhood Ireland and the National Women’s Council of Ireland have supported a shift towards a fully public childcare model, and new measures such as Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) funding, and additional administrative work the State now requires providers to complete, seem to be leaning towards greater Government involvement in childcare.

“We’re the ones doing all the admin and streamlining of all of their systems, and we don’t get remunerated properly,” said Ms Dunne.

“They don’t have the worry of owning and managing the business, but they’re still making sure that we tick all the boxes, while chronically underfunding us.”

Stress

She believes that the stress and anxiety made many providers — including herself — sick over Christmas as they went into overdraft or took out bank loans to pay their staff over the holidays.

She warned that there are lots more closures to come in the childcare sector.

Meanwhile, Ms Spiteri, who recently completed a degree in public policy, explained: “My interpretation of it is that they’re trying to make a public model, so they’re deliberately culling these smaller services that won’t be required for it, but what they’re doing is they’re taking away choices.

“Experienced people are leaving the childcare sector.

“They are trying to drive a graduate-led sector, but these people with FETAC Level 5 and Level 6 qualifications with decades of floor experience are being sacrificed.”