Hundreds of people are expected to take part in a protest against a new Government funding scheme for Community Childcare, which threatens to force up to half of the Community Childcare facilities in Dublin’s Inner City to close before the end of next year.

The protest is being organised by SIPTU and the Inner City Childcare Providers Network (ICCPN) and will begin at Liberty Hall at 1pm on Tuesday 9th December and move to rally at the Office of the Minister for Children who have introduced the new Subvention Scheme.

According to the ICCPN, the Minister for Children has refused to meet them to discuss the results of research they have conducted which shows that the Subvention Scheme is causing big problems for Community Childcare facilities.

The research, which involved detailed consultation with 15 inner city community childcare providers, found that due to the conditions attached to the Subvention Scheme:

• There is a real risk that services will close.
• Working parents may see increases in childcare fees ranging from 50% increases to 166% increases over 2007 costs, making childcare unaffordable for many.
• Vulnerable children, who are the majority of children catered for by the community facilities, will lose their valuable access to pre-school education.
This is because:
• Nearly half of the community childcare providers (42%) have already seen their funding reduced and their funding will be further reduced by 15% in 2009 and 25% in 2010.
• Implementation of the scheme is very cumbersome and difficult to the extent that over 50% of projects are concerned about the impact additional administration is having on the quality of services for children and families.
• Subvention payments are paid forward based on previous years’ enrolments. As a result, projects are now no longer able to plan in a coherent and businesslike fashion for the following year.

Two Community Childcare facilities in Ringsend– the Ringsend Community Crèche and Ringsend Action Project Afterschool Project– have been adversely affected by this new scheme.

According to Claire Casey of Ringsend Action Project “The Créche has had to increase fees dramatically and the Afterschool is being told to begin charging parents up to €800 per term. Families on low pay who do not qualify for any Subvention are not able to afford the cost price of these facilities and will be forced to take their children out of them.” Ms. Casey insists that “This Scheme is a poverty trap for low-paid workers that is having the exact opposite effect that the Government wants when they say the Scheme is supposed to target disadvantaged families.”

She says that both the Créche and the Afterschool will be closed on December 9th. When asked how this will affect families using these facilities, she said “We have to protest this terrible Government decision as strongly as possible, and many parents have already told us they want to protest it too. We hope that parents and children, and anyone who believes that quality childcare should be available to everyone, will join us in calling for adequate funding for Community Childcare facilities.”

Above: Will there be a ‘Class of 2009’?