Childcare industry struggling to find staff as stress and workload increases, survey finds

A survey of over 2,000 child care providers last month by trade union Siptu has found that most have vacancies for staff, and almost all of them say that recruitment is negatively affecting the care they offer.

Darragh O'Connor, head of strategic organising and campaigns with Siptu, told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland on Thursday that the rate of pay was the main problem.

“Recruitment and retention is a big problem for a majority of services. They're struggling to hire staff, they're struggling to keep on the ones that they have. And this is having an impact, it means that they're struggling to keep the staff to child ratio, which is a legal mandate and the minimum that they have to do.

“It also means that for those who remain in work -  their workload is increasing as well. And what the survey is saying is that this increases stress, increases the workload and that compounds that. It's a vicious cycle of recruitment challenges, people working really hard, and people struggling in their work,” he said.

"The main issue is the rate of pay," Mr O'Connor said. Many of the early childcare educators have degrees, are well-educated and passionate about their work, he outlined. 

"But the minimum rate of pay is €13 per hour, and that's certainly improved over the last couple of years. It's increased significantly.

“But given that there's such a huge cost of living increase that's affecting everybody, it has traditionally been a low paid sector as well, that people see they're able to bring their skills, their qualifications and go into other industries so they can move now to becoming teachers or SNAs, which are quite equivalent professions that they can move into,” Mr O'Connor said.

"It is incredibly difficult to recruit at the moment," Mr O'Connor said, but he said the increased rates of pay introduced in the last budget has improved the situation in comparison to last year. 

This is quite a high turnover of staff, with around 20% on average in the sector.