Creches closing for 3 days from today

HI, DO parents have to be earning outside the home (i.e. paying tax) to qualify for the subsidy?

think @Deeec in response to your comment 'The system should be as simple as creche gets paid their subsidy whether child is there or not - a childcare place should be paid for whether used or not.'

Assume the government is trying to ensure that parents are 'at work' while the subsidy if being paid. Its unfair to lump this onus on the creche, making the burden of admin so time consuming

It's ridiculously over the top. I'm not blaming the creche by the way, they didn't dream up this scheme.

The mum whose baby was running a high temp should have been able to take her baby home early, with no loss of subsidy. The child wasn't well, and needed to go home.

Creches ask parents not to send children in when ill, but if keeping them home means the parents will lose all or some of their subsidy (as well as probably some pay from missing time off work) how is that benefitting anyone?

I can't believe there is no clause that covers having to take a child home early or keep them at home, for illness without loss of subsidy.

On the collecting early and losing subsidy - it's not quite as straightforward so someone's been given the wrong information about this. There was a rumour around this in our creche earlier in the year and the creche sent on the guidance from NCS which states that parents can occasionally collect their children early from the facility. The creche are required to log the hours weekly & if there's an under attendance for a child (less than the registered hours) for an 8 week window, there is a notification sent. If it continues for another 4 weeks, only then can a subsidy be removed. If there's even just one full week of attendance in this 12 weeks, the clock resets. That is the official guidance from NCS in regards the scheme. And as creches are allowed to round up to the nearest hour, they definitely shouldn't face too many issues with people collecting a little early.

Oh yeah that jumped out at me from their post. What they were told is completely incorrect. I mean the NCS scheme isn't always the best but at least on this they recognise that kids will need to be in & out because of varying reasons and average it out.

15 minutes early each day would not have affected their hours as they are allowed to round up to the nearest hour. So I collect anywhere between 5pm & 6pm each day & we've never had an issue because of the rounding allowed by the scheme (not the creche - this is direct from the NCS scheme). I've never had to work out the hours like that. And while your NCS claim may be up to 45 hours a week, the creche can claim for just the normal hours that the child attends. My claim is up to 45 hours a week allowed but the creche is only claiming for 5 hours a day as he's in afterschool. I'd really question them on that. It's the March memo from NCS if they need the clarity on it. You shouldn't have to be worrying over collecting 15 minutes early.

They round up to the nearest hour alright but she went from being in the creche for 8 hours and 10 minutes (rounded up to 9) to 7 hours and 55 minutes (rounded up to 8). Changed day to day but that was the problem apparently.

So that Friday when she was teething she had spent 4 days fulfilling the time requirement, and on the 5th day when she was teething I wanted to collect her but they let me know about this hours thing.

So basically every 5 weeks ish we're going to bring her in very very early and collect her at the normal time to make sure she's fulfilling the time requirement. Which I just think is absolutely mental for a 1 year old to have to do. Of course we could change the hours or not claim at all but the idea that the government department for families has this incentive for kids to physically be in the creche is maddening.

It's one more thing we have to factor into plans as well in terms of holidays and relatives visiting etc. We work around it but really shouldn't have to.

Yes this is the thing, reduce the claim to 8 hours instead of 9 hours. Which is something they've offered in fairness. I would end up paying about 30 euro more per month than the parent who leaves their kid in the creche until after 5pm.

We might end up going that route if the bringing-her-in-early system once every 5 weeks doesn't work out for us.

The maddening thing is that we end up paying about 350 euro more per year because we're collecting our daughter an hour early. If a parent wanted to keep their daughter home one day a week, it would cost them 642 euro extra per year after subsidy reduction. It should be about creating incentives for families to become closer, not further apart.

I don't really understand the issue that childcare providers have. When I had my kids in creche, it was €1,100 per month per child, or €5.28 an hour (50 hours a week for 50 weeks a year). We didn't use it for 50 hours a week, but you had no choice but to pay for the hours the creche was open. When the ECCE kicked in, the creche was paid about €270 a month per child by the government. The creche took this off the €1,100 a month, so you'd pay €830 a month. Since the ECCE hours were "free", that meant we were paying €5.69 per hour outside of the ECCE hours. The creche still got the same amount, whether the ECCE kicked in or not.

Am I misunderstanding anything? Is there additional costs to the creche to running an ECCE scheme that I'm not aware of?

Childcare funding changes not coming in till september 2024....

They can’t just up their fees, it’s part of the funding model now. Fees get locked in. Unless they aren’t taking the core finding and part of the NCS. So there is no stunt

It's not the NCS funding they can't access but the newer Core Funding which is a separate scheme. Core funding provides funding for every child in the creche direct to the creche & doesn't involve the parents at all. When they signed up to core funding, they had to agree to a fee freeze on their current fees and are not allowed to increase them. They can pull out of core funding and up their fees but realistically most will not do this as they will likely lose out in the long run. Main problem is that another creche could open up across the way, set their fees, apply for core funding & freeze at a rate that is more beneficial to them whereas the original creche is left at fees that were set in August 2021.

Witch girl explains better than I can as I don’t know the full details but yes it’s part of the issue they have at the moment. They are struggling to keep going with so much extra admin too and staffing is difficult.

Its fairly low paid although it’s got a small bit better and the expectation of qualifications has increased, girls (in general) are expected to get better qualifications and still earn poor enough money. The whole model is broken and it’s not going to get any better the way it’s going at the moment, government have invested over the last few years in fairness but I’m not sure they’ve done it in the best way. From talking to my wife all the systems put in place could have only come from a state body as it’s very complicated and doesn’t need to be.