Childcare services have warned they will not be able to keep going in the coming months unless staff are prioritised for COVID-19 testing.
Early Childhood Ireland (ECI) said providers won’t be able to keep their doors open if staff members are out sick awaiting test results.
On Breakfast Briefing with Stephen Murphy this morning, ECI Chief Executive Teresa Heeney said childcare staff are currently waiting up to five days for a COVID-19 result.
“What we are really, really very concerned about is that this sector was already experiencing a very sharp staffing issue,” she said.
“It is virtually impossible to get replacement staff. So, we are really concerned that if testing is not made available on an urgent basis for this sector then, simply, operators will not be able to keep their services open.”
She said there are around 1,500 childcare operators currently open around the country, with the remaining 3,000 due to return in the coming weeks.
Ms Heeney noted that the sector operates to “very strict staffing ratios” – meaning services can’t open their doors without the required staff numbers.
“It is regulated by Tusla so services literally would be in breach of their regulations if they were to open without the correct adult to child ratio in their services,” she said.
She said staff in the sector are already “very poorly paid” with most services not offering “any way sophisticated” sick leave policies.
She suggested the answer to that is to ensure they are treated as critical workers by the testing service – ensuring they can stay home if they feel ill without putting employers under pressure.
“We hear all the time from operators who talk about children really excited about coming back to play with their friends so it is about balancing that with balancing the public health concern and the need to keep everybody safe,” she said.
“In order to do that, we really need testing that ideally would be done within 24 or 48 hours and for our sector to be prioritised in terms of getting access to those tests and getting results back quickly.”
She said the early years sector should be prioritised for testing alongside schoolteachers.
