THERE HAVE BEEN up to 175 times in which at least one room in a Co Meath crèche has closed due to staffing shortages since October last year, parents of children who attend the centre have said.

The frequent closure of rooms at crèches across Ireland is leading parents to take copious amounts of annual leave to care for their children, or having to pay for babysitters on top of their childcare fees.

Providers whose centres are prone to these consistent closures say that as a result of availing of the state’s core funding scheme, they do not have the revenue to offer staff competitive wages. This has led to room closures as a result of staff shortages, they say.

Tigers Childcare is one of these providers who have repeatedly shut rooms in several of its 34 centres. 

It is also among the 93% of Irish providers who avail of the state’s core funding for childcare. Through this scheme, providers receive funding to cover operational and staffing costs in return for freezing weekly fees at a universal price.

Core funding is the government’s mechanism for its election promise to cap childcare at the cost of €200 per month per child by the end of its current term.

Over the past eight months, parents who avail of Tigers Childcare services have reported repeated room closures at a number of the facilities – some of which they were only told of at short notice, leaving them scrambling to secure alternate arrangements. 

In many cases, this has seen parents paying for pricier babysitters, availing of help from family and friends, and in some cases forced to take days of annual leave.

Many of those who spoke to The Journal about their experiences described the upset, frustration and stress these repeated closures have caused. Due to the lack of childcare places available across the state, many cannot change providers.

One parent, whose child is in Tigers Childcare’s Enfield centre, said there have been 176.5 days in which at least one room in the centre has closed since October last year.

Parents have come together to track the number of days in which a room at the centre closed, including partial closures.

In response to queries, Tigers Childcare told The Journal they are aware of 134 such closures at the centre, although it said many of these were partial closures in which the rooms were only shut for part of a day.

It said these closures are only ever taken as a last resort due to staffing issues, and it has taken proactive steps to drive recruitment to minimise the impact on families.

One of the parents told The Journal that while there has been communication between the company and parents, the situation doesn’t appear to have changed substantially. 

“At the moment, it’s every second week, pretty much, you get a five-day closure [of at least one room],” she said. While now there is more notice – around a week – of the closures, before parents could be told of a Monday closure on the Friday evening.

“At one stage, my child was already in the centre when I got a message to come collect her because they had to shut.”

Rooms in crèches are divided by age ranges with each child assigned to a specific room. The rooms subject to closure rotate, and sometimes there can be two or more closed for a period of several days.

Helen said she’s sympathetic to the company’s struggle to find and retain staff, which they say is compounded by waiting on garda vetting for new staff. 

“I really appreciate that there’s a wider policy issue there, but at the end of the day, my toddler doesn’t know what core funding is,” she said.

“The political kind of element of it – that’s not something I can explain to her, and that’s why she’s not going to see her friends this week.”

Helen has had to take large amounts of her annual leave to care for her child, as well as paying for a babysitter on other days on top of the crèche fees when her daughter’s room is closed. (Tigers does refund parents for days their child’s room in the crèche is closed.)

“My annual leave is gone. We don’t get the family holiday this year because of this situation,” she said. “I don’t think they fully appreciate the impact that it’s actually having on parents and on the kids themselves.”

Helen praised the staff at the Enfield centre, and said she believes they should be paid more. However, there is concern that the centre may leave the scheme, resulting in much higher fees. Providers who have previously left the scheme did so to raise prices – that cost then fell fully on parents. 

“It is something that has been held over our heads a little bit for the last year and a bit – and that comes through in the correspondence from them, in that everything seems to have a ‘core funding isn’t good enough, and we will take it away’.”

Another mother whose children attend various services at the centre described the situation as a “nightmare” that has led her and her husband to seek alternate forms of childcare to fill in the gaps created by the room closures.

She said she understands issues around recruitment and staffing, but added, “It’s a lot to be paying for a service that’s not provided full-time”.

Other parents whose children are enrolled in the centre have made the decision to search for other providers on their commute to work in Dublin, but there is a scarcity of places available.

“How do they expect gender equality in Ireland when they are doing this to mothers?” one of the mothers asked. “It’s not the men who are suffering. Every last one of us mothers are exhausting annual leave, losing positions, stepping back.”

For the past eight weeks, one of her children in full-time care at the centre has been in for one week, and off for the next, she said. 

She said she understands difficulties surrounding core funding, but that stepping back from the scheme would isolate a lot of families who cannot afford to pay higher fees, particularly if they have several children in full-time childcare.

Sarah*, whose child is also enrolled at the Enfield crèche, said the frustration is “really high”. She can work from home for some of the week, which means she tries to care for her child during her work day when her child’s room is closed.

“It often means you have to work at nighttime to catchup [on work],” she said, “and forgo your evenings.” She often has to ask her employer if she can work from home to accommodate caring for her child when the room is closed “but it’s wearing a bit thin now that it’s gone on so long”.

Another parent, whose children attend the company’s Knocklyon Lodge centre in south Dublin, said there have been continual closures over the past few months.

The Knocklyon centre was acquired by Tigers in February of this year.

“There were no room closures before Tigers took over,” she told The Journal.

“They also took away any flexibility – before children could do reduced hours over the summer – that is gone. Also, children could attend part-time in after school care – that was also taken away for the cohort starting after school this year.”

The company’s Pembroke centre in Co Cork has also been experiencing similar closures.

Chief executive’s response 

The CEO of the company, Karen Clince, told The Journal that closures relating to staffing is widespread across various providers. Clince could not confirm the number of closures at any of the centres, but said they are taken as a last resort.

They have also made significant advancements in recruitment to minimise disruption, she said, adding that the biggest challenge with getting staff on board is garda vetting.

“In some cases, the process is taking up to seven weeks,” she said.  

Clince said she “completely understands” the frustration from parents and said she didn’t wish to minimise the impact on parents.

“We know that consistency and routine are important for children and that changes at short notice can place significant pressure on parents trying to balance family and work commitments.”

Parents are refunded for days when the closures impact their child’s care.

“While we always endeavour to maintain consistency for the children we care for, and their parents, we understand that our approach to closures does not work for everyone and offer a full deposit refund to any family that is not happy with [the closures], if they no longer wish to use our service.”

Clince highlighted in an Oireachtas Committee debate in April of this year that “the system is now under significant and increasing pressure”.

“The most immediate issue we face is the ability to attract and retain staff. While the sector now aspires to a graduate-led workforce, many qualified graduates are not remaining in the sector.

“Workforce challenges directly limit our capacity to operate. In some cases, we cannot open rooms safely due to insufficient staffing and therefore have to refuse care to children, with children remaining on waiting lists despite services having the physical capacity to accommodate them.”

Clince highlighted rising costs of wages, recruitment, agency staffing, onboarding and training, “all within a fixed funding structure”. She said core funding is not sufficient to run many of these centres and Tigers is facing the possibility of withdrawing some of its lower-fee centres from the scheme, “which we do not want to do”.

Some of the main issues with the core funding model flagged by Clince during the Oireachtas debate was that it does not account for the need to strictly maintain the child-to-staff ratio.

These ratios are strictly enforced by Tusla and vary based on the ages of children. For babies under a year old, there must be one staff member for every three. For every five children aged one to two years old, or every six children aged two to three, there must be one adult. 

For children aged three to six, it is one staff member for every eight children.

“Every time a nappy is changed or a child is put to sleep, we have to have an extra person in the room to cover the ratio.”

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Clince said the funding regulations don’t account for staff taking breaks or holidays.

Core funding makes up about 20% of the company’s income, she said, while staffing costs are between 65 to 70% of its operating costs.

Tigers pay slightly above the minimum rates, Clince told The Journal in response to queries – over €1 more an hour – in efforts to attract and retain staff.

However, the firm claims as it avails of core funding, its revenue is more limited than if it charged its own private fees. As a result, it cannot offer even more competitive wages, leading to difficulty in acquiring and retaining staff.

It does not intend to exit the scheme, but it has been flagged that a number of other providers have chosen to do so as a result of reduced revenue.

Last month, the firm was sold to UK company Kids Planet in a deal reported to be worth up to €75 million. 

The Irish Times reported that the acquisition saw an Irish investment fund BGF sell the 40% stake it acquired for €10.5 million in 2021. At the time, Tiger Childcare’s revenues were calculated at around €6.7 million annually. In 2024, this had grown to €18.8 million as it had acquired more centres. 

The Journal contacted the company for confirmation of these figures, as well as more detail on its operational costs.

In its 2024 accounts, pre-sale but also pre-acquisition of many centres, Tiger Time Holdings Ltd said one of the risks facing its business was operating in a “highly competitive market, particularly around colleague recruitment”. It says to mitigate the risk, it actively monitors pay scales. 

Last week, Tigers Childcare advertised a ‘jobs fair’ in Malaga, Spain on its social media accounts. It asked people interested in a rewarding career with progression opportunities and meaningful work with children and families to come along, bring a CV and ask questions. 

Children’s Minister Norma Foley on Wednesday announced further weekly maximum fee reductions for parents availing of these providers in September. 

Under the new maximum fee caps, the highest possible upfront cost for a typical full day place of 45 hours per week will drop from around €198 per week to €183.70 per week.

Government response

At a press conference at Government Buildings last Wednesday, where Foley and Junior Minister Emer Higgins announced the increased core funding, questions surrounding staff pay dominated.

Some staff members in the sector – defined as early years educators and School Age Childcare (SAC) practitioners – are being paid €15 an hour from the age of 20, which is just 85c above minimum wage.

Lead educators (room leaders) and SAC coordinators are paid €16 an hour from the age of 20, which is €1.85 more than minimum wage.

The rate of pay climbs to €20.25 at the highest level of graduate centre manager.

While Foley acknowledged that the pay is insufficient, she stressed that the State is not the employer of these staff members, and core funding is provided only to cover costs that would have otherwise be covered by higher fees.

She said €45 million of the €480 million package for the next school year – a 23% increase on last year’s allocated funding – has been ringfenced for staff wages.

Asked about providers linking staffing shortages to insufficient core funding, leading to these frequent room closures in some facilities, Foley said: “These are all private operators - all private operators – but the State, the general public, the taxpayers are actually putting €90 million on the table over two years to ensure that the rates of pay for staff will be improved, and we will do more going forward.

“That will be the ambition, not just in that sphere, across different challenges that we have, that we could do more moving forward to tackle each of the three different areas.”

The Journal contacted An Garda Síochána for comment on extended wait times for vetting to be returned.

Gardaí said in response that the target turnaround time remains at 5-10 business days for 85% of vetting applications received.

“Due to high volumes of applications being received for an extended period of time and ongoing operational commitments, the current turnaround time is approximately 18 business days from the date the application is received at the Garda National Vetting Bureau for over 85% of applications received.”

It said that in a number of instances, it is necessary to conduct enquiries with external garda stations and agencies, in which case “processing times are significantly longer than the general average”.

*Names have been changed

Additional reporting by Conor O’Carroll