A shortage of childcare options is leaving many desperate parents with no option but to treat creche places the way they do city centre car parking spaces, a parent of two young children has said.
Jessica Lee, an early years education lecturer at Technological University Dublin who is currently on maternity leave, was speaking at a meeting of a childcare campaign group in Dublin on Wednesday.
The Together for Public alliance is led by the National Women’s Council and is calling on the Government to roll out public early childhood education and care services in the forthcoming budget.
“The way childcare is being treated at the moment is like parking spaces for children,” Ms Lee told the event in Dublin on Wednesday morning.
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“It’s like you drive around until you find an empty space to park your child, to shove your child into, to keep them alive until you come home at the end of the day.”
When Ms Lee’s three-year-old, Henry, suddenly lost his place in a childcare setting last year, it caused the family huge stress, she said, because of the lack of alternatives.
Now, after the arrival of Alice (aged three months), there is the pending problem of paying for childcare for two.
“My son isn’t at the point of starting primary school yet and so we’re going to be paying around €1,200 to €1,500 a month ... that’s with the subsidies applied. I don’t know how we’re going to manage it, but we have to because we both have to work. The irony in my case is it’s because I want to go back and train early childhood educators.”
Director of the National Women’s Council, Orla O’Connor, said Ms Lee’s experience highlights the shortcomings in a system that is failing the majority of its stakeholders.
“It’s not working,” she said. “It’s not working for children, for women, for parents, for educators. Providers and families are really being pushed to the brink, and they can’t wait any longer to have real solutions. That’s why we’re saying that with Budget ’26 the Government has an opportunity to signal a new approach, and key to that is what they’ve already committed to in the programme for government.”
She said the alliance, which includes more than 40 civil society organisations, is calling for an additional €30 million to provide 3,000 extra places next year as well as funding to continue the process of reducing fees, investment in infrastructure, ring-fenced money for improved pay and a greater targeted supports for accessibility and inclusivity programmes.
“We met with the Minister [for Children], Norma Foley and she said she is committed to what’s in the programme for government,” said Ms O’Connor, “but those were words, and what we need to see now is action in this budget.”
Wednesday’s meeting at Buswell’s Hotel in Dublin 2 heard from a number of other speakers with experience of the sector, including Minna Murphy, originally from Finland, who runs two services in Co Cork and said many small providers like her own are struggling.
[ Free childcare is key in addressing child poverty, advocacy group saysOpens in new window ]
After 10 years of running one preschool, she said, “I had an opportunity to expand, so I opened my second preschool, and I started an after-school, the first ever after-school service in our village. Now, I’m in a position to pay myself a managerial salary, and I am in a position to pay higher salaries for my staff. I wasn’t able to do that when I was just running one service.”
Louise Bayliss, head of social justice at St Vincent de Paul, said adequate provision of early-years services was key to helping families, particularly those with one parent, out of poverty.
“Tackling child poverty and increasing their wellbeing is not only about income transfers,” she said, “it is also about ensuring access to high-quality, universal public services. And early-years services are absolutely key to that.”
