Childcare and early years workers: the Employment Regulation Order and Core Funding

Early years and school-age childcare was, until 2022, a sector paid at or near the minimum wage. The Early Years' Services Employment Regulation Order changed that by setting legally binding minimum rates for each role in a service, and the 2025 order raised them again. Alongside the order, Core Funding ties a service's State funding to compliance with the order. If you work in a creche, a preschool, a school-age service or a childminding service that is registered with Tusla and employs you, the order's rate for your role is your floor, not the minimum wage. This guide explains the order, the roles, the Core Funding link, and how to enforce it.

What an employment regulation order is

A Joint Labour Committee is a Labour Court body with equal employer and worker representation for a sector. The Early Years' Services JLC was established in 2021 following a campaign by the unions and the employer bodies for a route to raise pay in a sector funded largely by the State. It proposes minimum rates; the Labour Court adopts the proposal; the Minister makes the order as a statutory instrument; and from the commencement date the order's terms are implied into every contract of employment in the sector, with any less favourable contract term void.

The first order commenced in September 2022. A further order followed, and the 2025 order raised the rates again. A new order replaces the previous one, so the rate that binds your employer on any pay day is the one in force that day. The current order is on the Irish Statute Book and summarised on the WRC's ERO page; any new order is noted on /changes.

The roles and the rates

The order sets a separate minimum hourly rate for each role, defined by the work you do and, for some roles, the qualification you hold:

The rate for each role is the rate in the current order. All of them are above the national minimum wage, which in 2026 is €14.15 an hour for a worker aged 20 or over, €12.74 at 19, €11.32 at 18 and €9.91 under 18. The minimum wage matters only as the floor beneath the floor.

Two disputes come up more than any other. The first is being paid the educator rate while doing the lead educator's job: the order's rate follows the role you actually perform, not your job title, so a letter asking the service to confirm your role in writing is the place to start. The second is the graduate rate: if you hold the qualifying degree and lead a room, the graduate lead educator rate applies, and it is worth sending a copy of the certificate to the service with a dated letter. The order also addresses pay for non-contact time, breaks and other conditions in the terms the current instrument uses; read it.

Core Funding and the order

Core Funding is the Department of Children's scheme that pays registered services a grant towards their operating costs, introduced in 2022 in step with the first order. A service that takes Core Funding agrees, as a condition, to pay at least the order's rates and to keep its fees at the level it had when it joined. The funding includes an amount intended to meet the cost of the order's rates, and later rounds of Core Funding have been increased to meet the higher rates in the later orders.

This matters to you in two ways. A service in Core Funding has been funded to pay you the order's rate, so an argument that it cannot afford to is weaker than it sounds. And a service that is paid Core Funding and pays below the order is in breach of its funding agreement as well as of the order, which means the Department, as well as the WRC, has an interest. Whether your service is in Core Funding is public: the Department publishes the list of participating services.

Hours, leave and the school year

The Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 applies in full: a 48-hour average week over four months, 11 hours' daily rest, 24 hours' weekly rest, a 15-minute break after 4.5 hours and 30 minutes after 6 (unpaid unless the contract says otherwise), and records of your hours. Ratios do not change the break rules: if the service cannot release you for a break because of child-to-adult ratios, it must arrange cover or give compensatory rest, not skip the break.

Annual leave is the greatest of four weeks for 1,365 hours in the leave year, one third of a week for each month of at least 117 hours, or 8% of hours worked, up to four weeks. The ten public holidays in 2026 are 1 January, 2 February, 17 March, 6 April, 4 May, 1 June, 3 August, 26 October, 25 December and 26 December. Many services close on them and must pay you for them; a part-time worker qualifies after 40 hours in the five weeks before the holiday. The annual leave calculator works it out.

ECCE-only services run for the school year and many staff are laid off, or put on a fixed-term contract, for the summer. If you are laid off, you may be entitled to Jobseeker's Benefit for the weeks you are not working, subject to PRSI conditions, and a lay-off that runs for four consecutive weeks or six in thirteen lets you claim a redundancy payment on form RP9 if you have 104 weeks' service, which the employer can counter-notice within seven days if full work will resume. If you are on successive fixed-term contracts for the school year, the Protection of Employees (Fixed-Term Work) Act 2003 gives you equal treatment with permanent colleagues and a contract of indefinite duration after four years unless the service has objective grounds for another fixed term. Service across the summer gap counts as continuous for these purposes where the lay-off is temporary and the employment resumes.

Statutory sick pay is 5 days a year at 70% of pay capped at €110, after 13 weeks' service, with a certificate from day one, unless the service's own scheme is at least as favourable. Maternity leave is 26 weeks with Maternity Benefit of €299 a week in 2026; the service is not obliged to top it up unless the contract says so.

Contracts and qualifications

Your core terms (names, address, start date, pay and the pay reference period, hours, place of work, job title, probation) must be in writing within 5 days and the rest within 1 month. The job title and the rate are the two lines to check against the order. Probation is at most six months, twelve only exceptionally. The contract checker lists everything that must be in writing.

The Child Care Act 1991 (Early Years Services) Regulations 2016 require staff working directly with children to hold at least a QQI Level 5 major award in early childhood care and education, and the ECCE scheme requires the room leader to hold Level 6. Garda vetting through Tusla is required before you start. A service cannot deduct the cost of vetting or of a qualification it requires from your pay unless your contract provides for it and the deduction is fair and reasonable, or you agreed in writing in advance; otherwise it may be an unlawful deduction under the Payment of Wages Act 1991.

Enforcing the order at the WRC

Being paid below the order's rate for your role is an unlawful deduction of the amount properly payable under the Payment of Wages Act 1991 and a contravention of the Industrial Relations Acts. The complaint is made online to the WRC within six months of each pay day, with no fee, and each pay day is its own contravention; the adjudicator can extend to twelve months for reasonable cause. The WRC can order the arrears and compensation. WRC inspectors enforce EROs directly and can inspect records without naming the worker who prompted the inspection.

Write first: your role, the rate in the order, the rate paid, your hours and the shortfall. Keep the letter. A service that cuts your hours or ends your contract after you raise the order may be penalising you for exercising a statutory right, which needs no minimum service for an unfair dismissal claim. The deadline checker gives you the date for each pay day and the case file keeps the figures in one place.

Unions and Big Start

SIPTU represents early years workers and sits on the Early Years' Services Joint Labour Committee; its Big Start campaign, run with parents and providers, was the route by which the sector got a JLC and the first order. Fórsa represents some staff in community services. Membership brings representation at the WRC at no charge and current information on the order's rates. See which union covers you.

Where this leaves you

Your floor in early years is the rate in the current Employment Regulation Order for the role you actually do, not the national minimum wage beneath it, and a service in Core Funding has been funded to pay it. The minimum wage checker gives you the statutory rate for your age and the shortfall over any period; take the order's figure for your role from the instrument on the Irish Statute Book or the WRC's ERO page and apply the same arithmetic to your hours. If you are below it, confirm your role in writing, then make a WRC complaint within six months of each pay day. Workers in contract cleaning and security have similar floors under their own orders, and au pairs who mind children in a family home are covered by the minimum wage rather than this order.