Childminders ‘should be registered’

PARENTS really don’t know what’s happening to their children when they are with childminders, a childcare expert has warned.

“We’re only hoping the childminding service is grand, but that’s not good enough,” said Patricia Murray of Childminding Ireland yesterday.

She accused the Government of dragging its heels in introducing a State registration process for all childminding services in Ireland.

“Everybody operating a childcare service, even for one child, should be registered,” she said. “That is not an unreasonable position.”

Childminders are currently only obliged to notify their health board and agree to be inspected by them if they are minding more than three pre-school children who are not related to each other.

Children aged six or more, however, are outside the remit of the 1991 Child Care Act.

In Northern Ireland all childminders, no matter how many children are in their care, have to be registered.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health said that while the regulations were being reviewed, there were no plans to amend the act to include childminders exempt from the current legislation.

Childminding Ireland discovered recently that only 100 childminders nationally had notified the health boards.

“This is crazy stuff, especially when it was estimated back in 1999 that there were 37,000 childminders,” said Ms Murray.

The OECD Thematic Review of Early Childhood Education and Care Policy in Ireland has proposed increasing the supply of childcare places by accrediting and subsidising quality childminders.