Across kitchens, offices, and crèches, a simple truth has been repeatedly borne out: when care is treated as a private matter, families pay more, women step back from work, and early years educators shoulder low wages for indispensable labor, yet Ireland still organizes early childhood education and care as a fragmented market and couples it with a flat-rate parents’ payment that falls below the minimum wage. At the Recipes for Gender Equality conference, hosted by the National Women’s Council with support from the Communicating Europe Initiative, speakers argued that the country’s model is out of step with European norms. Their case was straightforward but sweeping—build a universal public ECEC system and replace flat-rate leave with pay-linked benefits.
ireland’s childcare gap and why structure matters
Despite higher allocations and incremental leave extensions, the system remains costly for families and unstable for providers because funding flows into a private market that cannot guarantee universal access or fair pay. Educators—predominantly women—face undervaluation that depresses retention and, by extension, quality. International evidence presented by Dr. Helen Penn underscored a consensus: public ECEC paired with properly paid family leave delivers better outcomes in children’s learning, women’s employment, and household resilience. Public provision is not just about more money; it is about using public authority to set wages, enforce standards, and stabilize supply across communities, not just where profit margins allow.
Moreover, the current framework compounds gender inequality in ways that ripple through a lifetime. Women still conduct roughly twice as much unpaid care as men, a pattern reinforced by a parents’ payment of €289 per week that sits below the minimum wage and discourages fathers’ uptake. Without pay-related benefits, families with higher earners tend to default to mothers taking longer leave, which lowers women’s earnings, slows career progression, and reduces pension accrual. Pay-linked leave—designed to replace a meaningful share of income for both parents—has been shown across Europe to boost paternal participation, support maternal employment continuity, and rebalance care at home. Reformers argued that anything less perpetuates the status quo.
building a public model that lasts
Participants warned that Ireland’s reliance on for-profit chains risks a consolidation wave that could drive up fees over time, undercut community providers, and narrow choice, especially in rural or low-income areas. Market logics also complicate the task of raising wages without pushing costs onto parents. A public model offers a different toolkit: direct public provision or public contracting that ties funding to fair pay scales, accredited training, and staff retention; capital planning that expands places where need is greatest; and fee caps that hold the line on affordability. Such design choices have proved decisive in member states that moved from patchwork markets to coherent systems with stable staffing and transparent quality measures.
Speakers placed these proposals within a broader European trajectory. The EU’s Work-Life Balance Directive and the European Care Strategy already set out principles for equitable leave and coordinated childcare systems, giving Ireland a ready-made policy scaffold to adapt. Backed by the Together for Public Alliance of more than 40 organizations, the conference urged government to sequence reforms: legislate pay-related parental benefits; commit multiannual funding to a universal public ECEC pathway; and establish national pay scales and career ladders for educators. By aligning funding, access, and workforce strategy under public leadership, the path to affordable, high-quality childcare and genuinely shared family leave became clearer, and the case for immediate, structural action was made.
