Preschool provider fears for the future under new scheme

FIVE years ago, Mary Cleary paid €1.5 million for a purpose-built childcare centre.

After 20 years in business, she couldn’t keep up with demand for her services in a booming Co Cork town and she needed to expand.

Now, she is fearing for her future because of what she describes as the Minister for Children’s “ill thought-out” plan of a year’s free preschool education by offering a one-size-fits-all capitation fee to preschool providers.

The capitation fee, she says, will be €17,500 short of what she needs, in 2010, to run her Carrigaline-based business.

“I obviously have a very big mortgage to pay and €13,500 in rates on top of that. I also have 30 staff along with gas and electricity bills. I run a good operation and I can’t continue to provide this with [Children’s] Minister [Barry] Andrews’s €48.50 weekly capitation fee,” she said. Ms Cleary, whose daughters also work with her, says she will be obliged to make her annual Christmas concert, Christmas kids’ party and annual end-of-year graduation an extra activity which parents will have to pay for separately.

“I can’t see what else I can do. This scheme just doesn’t work for me as I have big overheads. It might suit people with low overheads running a small operation, but I have a large wages bill as well as my mortgage and rates. This scheme was not thought out properly as it could close people with big mortgages down.”

Under the scheme, the Office of the Minister for Children (OMC) will pay preschool providers €48.50 per week for a child to attend preschool three or five days a week over 50 weeks of the year. It will pay €64.50 for a child to attend preschool three or five days a week over 38 weeks.

Ms Cleary has 110 children in her creche and all but 36 of them attend full daycare services. She says she has appealed to local TDs and Foreign Affairs Minister Micheál Martin for help, but she says Mr Andrews “isn’t listening as he wants to be the man who brought in free preschool, whether it works or not”.

Meanwhile, the Irish Preschool Play Association, most of whose 2,500 members run sessional services, say they have no problem with the plans.

Under the scheme, providers offering sessional services will no longer have to pay rates as they are offering a fully state-funded educational service, similar to schools.

The OMC has said the free preschool year will “provide children with their first formal experience of early learning, the starting-point of their educational and social development outside the home. Children who avail of preschool are more likely to be ready for school and a formal learning and social environment”.