Poll shows strong support for early-years care for all children

Early Childhood Ireland has launched its eighth annual barometer, which seeks to understand public attitudes and opinions towards early years and school age care in Ireland, through a national poll by RED C.

The barometer 2025 data found that in Munster 80% of people believe every child should be guaranteed access to high-quality and inclusive early years and school age care in their community.

Additionally, 71% agreed that the education of children under five is as important as the education of children over five, and 78% think early years education should be available free to all children.

Frances Byrne, director of Policy, Advocacy and Campaigning at Early Childhood Ireland, told The Echo: “It’s really good to see the high level of support showing an understanding of the importance of early years and school age care for children.

“There is no doubt in ECI’s mind that the impact of the free pre-school ECCE scheme has played a huge role here, 11 or 12 years ago I don’t think we would have seen these same results. So the ECCE programme has really shown people the impact early years services can have.”

However, Ms Byrne said that while the last government’s investment in the sector was welcome, it would take a lot more to create the programme that the barometer has shown the public want to see.

She said that one of the challenges is that multiple different problems need to be addressed “and it’s coming from a historical legacy of underinvestment”.

“The last government reached a milestone in 2023, €1 billion in expenditure. While that was phenomenal, we know from comparisons with other countries that while important advances have been made, we are simultaneously very low down comparatively in terms of investment.

“One of the knock-on effects of that is high fees for parents, so we understand why the Government is focusing on affordability but the problem is that it’s not going to be enough on its own.”

Ms Byrne continued: “Take a setting in Mallow for example, come next budget, the same level of funding will be going into that setting, the Government replacing fees for parents is not increasing investment coming into that and other settings.

“The last government reached that €1bn mark but there’s a broad agreement that at least another €2bn is needed so that parents in Cork and across Ireland aren’t seeing their children on waiting lists, so that mothers don’t have to contact creches while they are pregnant, so there can be that certainty for their families.”

She explained that ECI would like to see a plan for future investment into the services and staff as well as just reducing affordability for parents, and that pay parity with primary school teachers should be part of this plan.

“In the run up to the election, we looked for the government to implement four asks and our priority was giving graduates who work in early years and school age settings the same level of pay as primary school teachers.

“Every political party in the state before the election said they support moving to a more publicly funded model.

“If the government named a date for bringing graduates into the public pay system, even if the date was 2027 or 2028, it would immediately give comfort to those settings and for graduates, including our 406 member organisations in Cork, and those studying early years at the moment.

“Many of them will unfortunately move into a different sector, retrain as a primary school teacher or work as an SNA because of the lack of parity.

“Many of them come out with their qualifications and are still left on low to medium type wages, no pension, no pay scale, they don’t enjoy the job security and career progression that primary teachers have.”

She added that it is also a matter of recognition and feeling valued for the work they do, and that parents of children who attend settings will always say that the staff there are fantastic and skilled people, which echoes the results of the barometer.

“We need the Government to catch up with that.”

In light of the nine early years closures in Cork in 2024 and 17 in 2023, Ms Byrne said: “We’ve been calling for years now for the government to be more hands on in the event of closures, there should be a stakeholder team set up to look at the setting, make an assessment and see if they can help.”

She also called for better capacity planning, and a commitment to support smaller services if they are the only one in an area, even if they will never see huge numbers of children attending.

“Some closures may turn out to be inevitable, but there should be far more state intervention, these closures would not be allowed to happen in other countries.”