06/10/2025
🚨🔪A Death by a Thousand Cuts🔪🚨
Ireland currently invests less than half the EU average in Early Years…
We’ve been led up the garden path for too long.
While government press releases boast of “record investment” and “affordable childcare,” the truth is far darker. Behind every promise of cheaper fees lies a silent crisis.
Providers being decimated by the day, crushed under the weight of a funding & policy model that squeezes the breathe from us all.
Parents please see, they hide the truth from you. The lower fees you’re promised come at a devastating cost and it’s brutal.
This choreographed dismantling of the nations Early Years Sector. The hollowing out of services, underfunding, over regulated paperwork, rampant negative bureaucracy and the loss of the very people who built the foundation of early learning in Ireland.
This is a death by a thousand cuts. Not sudden, but deliberate, quiet, and cruel.
And unless tomorrow’s Budget finally delivers real reform, there may soon be no Early Years sector left to save…
While promises of “record investment” will be echoed through press releases, the reality on the ground told a very different story. Early Years Services and our wondering Educators welcome children into services every day and support the Economy. So who is supporting is. Why are we left picking up the pieces, operating under the weight of chronic underfunding, inequitable supports, and policy decisions that continue to ignore the lived reality of services national. Why are we seeing so many sessional services close across ireland. We now see many different types of services pull out of Core Funding. Large, medium and small services are all saying the same thing. Core funding is inadequate and does not cover the cost of running a business.
We’ve spent the past year doing what we’ve always done…Providing evidence, data, and real stories from real people. We have been clear, consistent, and constructive. We’ve shown what’s wrong and what’s needed to fix it. Yet, our sector remains under pressure, our services stretched, and our voices too often drowned out by political spin.
So, as Budget 2026 looms, one question must be asked…has the Government finally listened?
Have they heard the providers on the brink, those who’ve held communities together for decades despite impossible margins?
Have they heard the educators who deliver excellence every day for pay that barely covers living costs?
Have they heard parents who see the cracks widening in a system that claims to support them, yet sidelines the very services they depend on?
Our sector doesn’t need another PR exercise. We need real reform. Better realistic funding, equitable treatment, and a stronger model that allows every type of provider to survive and thrive.
We’ve called for transparency, proportionality, and recognition of the unique challenges faced by larger, sessional and smaller services. We’ve made the case again and again that the early years we deserve as a nation cannot exist where fairness does not.
Ireland’s Early Years providers are not asking for handouts.
We are asking for honesty.
For respect. For policies that reflect the true cost of quality.
Tomorrow’s Budget will reveal whether this Government has truly heard the call… Or whether, once again, it will choose to ignore the people who lay the foundations of every child’s future.
One thing is certain: we will keep speaking up.
We will keep presenting the truth.
And we will not stop until the Early Years sector is finally given the fairness and respect it deserves.
