{"id":592006,"date":"2026-07-18T11:15:36","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T11:15:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/592006\/"},"modified":"2026-07-18T11:15:36","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T11:15:36","slug":"thousands-of-creche-and-early-education-staff-to-be-balloted-on-pay-proposals-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/592006\/","title":{"rendered":"Thousands of creche and early education staff to be balloted on pay proposals \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thousands of childcare<\/a> and early education staff are to be balloted on industrial action after talks intended to achieve a new minimum rates of pay for the sector broke down without agreement.<\/p>\n

Siptu<\/a>, which represents about 6,000 workers in creches and other education services, described offers by the two main representative bodies as \u201cunfair and unacceptable\u201d and said strike action is a possibility if its members reject the offers and employers fail to improve them.<\/p>\n

Talks between the two sides had produced separate offers from Childhood Services Ireland (CSI), an Ibec body that predominantly represents larger providers including the biggest chains, and the Federation of Early Childhood Providers (FECP) which represents many smaller and stand-alone services.<\/p>\n

CSI offered increases ranging from 4 per cent for graduate lead educators to 16 per cent for managers. Those currently on the lowest rates of pay in the sector, which employs about 35,000 people, most of them women, would see their hourly pay increase from \u20ac15 to \u20ac15.70 under the CSI plan. <\/p>\n

The FECP proposals provide for an increase to that basic \u20ac15 rate of 80 cent, or 5.35 per cent, increasing to 6.35 per cent, or \u20ac1.10, for lead educators currently on at least \u20ac16 per hour.<\/p>\n

The highest increases in their proposals are for graduate managers whose pay would go up by \u20ac2.50 or 12.4 per cent.<\/p>\n

In a message to its members, Siptu said the scale of the differences in the offers to ordinary staff and managers raised \u201ca serious issue regarding the lack of fairness and consistency across grades\u201d.<\/p>\n

The union argues that staff at many services already earn more than these specified minimum rates and the increases are essentially paid for by Government funding with \u20ac45 million set aside for the purpose from September 1st.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe offers fall well short of what is needed to reach a deal,\u201d said Siptu\u2019s Darragh O\u2019Connor on Friday. \u201cWe see the lowest paid receiving the lowest percentage increases which I think will be will be unacceptable to our members.\u201d <\/p>\n

In a statement, the FECP said the Government\u2019s \u20ac45 million, while a welcome contribution to the pay increases, does not pay all of them and employers in the sectors are facing greatly increased costs on other fronts.<\/p>\n

The organisation, which is led by Elaine Dunne, who runs a service in Dublin, said costs continue to increase but the fees charged by most services to parents have been frozen under the terms of their participation in the Core Funding scheme.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor years, the cost of employing staff, keeping services open, paying insurance, utilities, food and every other day-to-day expense has continued to rise,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the same time, the income available to many providers has remained effectively frozen. Yet they are now expected to absorb even more costs without being given the means to pay for them. This is not a disagreement about whether educators deserve better pay. They absolutely do. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe issue is not whether wages should rise. The issue is who is expected to pay for those increases.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Department of Children<\/a>, however, says that in addition to the funding ring-fenced for pay and wage increases, the core funding provided to service operators has grown substantially in recent years with the department pointing to increases of between 37 per cent and 47 per cent during a three-year period.<\/p>\n

Stephanie Roy of Childhood Services Ireland said its committee had put forward a \u201ccomprehensive and carefully considered offer\u201d aimed at securing the long-term sustainability of the sector.<\/p>\n

\u201cProviders want nothing more than to fairly compensate the dedicated professionals who educate and care for our children. However, as the JLC process continues, we must ensure that the mechanisms we agree to today do not force the closure of services tomorrow,\u201d she said in a statement. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe offer our nominees have made is realistic, equitable, and, most importantly, sustainable. It acknowledges the severe cost pressures facing providers while establishing a foundation for stability.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thousands of childcare and early education staff are to be balloted on industrial action after talks intended to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,17889,211941,18,19,17,31825],"class_list":["post-592006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-childcare","tag-department-of-children-disability-and-equality","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-siptu"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116940696859472768","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}