Like many a high-quality early years service, Crumlin Childcare Centre in Dublin already has in place most of the requirements under the new regulations coming into force this Thursday.

A community-based, full-day care service, its manager, Lelia Murphy, has been doing a tick-box exercise to see where it stands.

“I think a lot of it is very positive – it is focusing on the child and health and safety,” she says of the new set of regulations. However, along with the other 4,500 providers around the country, she is waiting for the Child and Family Agency (Tusla) to produce its quality and regulatory framework to explain in detail what will be expected of them.

“A lot of it we would do already and I think for us it would be going back and making sure you are doing it the correct way.”

But the bone of contention for providers is the extra administration that they say will be required, yet the capitation grants paid to them under the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) scheme does not allow for any time beyond that spent with the children.

“The more regulations that are put in like this, the more non-contact time is needed and the more you are looking at how to implement these,” says Ms Murphy. “The burden is on the service provider to ensure we are compliant with them.”

She is concerned that because everybody who works with children will now have to have at least a level five qualification, those training as childcare assistants on community employment schemes will not be counted as part of a centre’s ratio from next December. That will make it even harder for staff to have any “off the floor” time, she points out, and will be problematic when somebody calls in sick.

“Quality counts, but it also costs money,” she says. “Investment has to be put into the sector. We seem to get just one thing after another put on top of us, particularly in the community sector, because we are dealing with people who have different needs to the private sector.”

If we are insistent on building a graduate-led workforce, she adds, there have to be salary scales and remuneration for that level or “we won’t attract the best and the brightest”.

Brenda Lattimore of Bizzy B's Pre-School in Loughshinny, Skerries, Co Dublin, welcomes the new regulations and believes that most services won't have a problem implementing them. "We need more of this – stronger standards across the floor so that we become a profession, which we aren't viewed as at present," she says.

Ms Lattimore, whose service operates part time and will have 53 children from September, would like to see more investment in qualification of staff. “It is not logical to invest in primary, secondary and third-level education without investing adequately in early years,” she argues, as that is children’s stepping stone. “If we don’t get it right, it can be very wrong for children.”

The regulations bring another layer of work and while she is all for continuous professional development of staff, she wonders where it will fit in. She believes the Government is going to have to look at giving “off the floor” time under the ECCE scheme. However, Ms Lattimore, who is clearly passionate about her work, says she will do the extra required “because I’m mad; it takes that sort of lunacy to deliver that standard. I see why people just close their doors and say this is too much”.

As managing director of Pugwash Bay’s five childcare centres in the northeast, Lorna Clarke’s job is to ensure all are compliant with regulations and she is delighted there are no “dramatic” changes in the new ones. Many of the extra requirements, such as induction of staff, they would have been doing already.

Like many other providers she is concerned about the need for the vetting procedure of all staff to be completed before they start. While they are being promised a 48-hour turnaround by the new vetting bureau, she maintains it is still taking up to two months at present.

“How can I replace somebody who gives only a week’s notice when it takes eight weeks to vet a replacement?”

Ms Clarke also welcomes the new inspection process that gives providers the right of reply, having experienced the vagaries of the old one. After four of her centres were inspected simultaneously on the same day, when the reports came back their policy on behaviour and management was deemed compliant in three and highlighted as non-compliant in the fourth. Yet it was an identical document in each.

Tusla's director of quality, Brian Lee, says it is committed to minimising paperwork for services and he does not see that there is a significant change in the administrative requirement under the new regulations.

“There are extra bits in it for sure but it would not be a significant jump from what was there before, in my view.”

However, Heino Schonfeld of Barnardos believes the demands are very high for providers and that they need support to implement the regulations. Civil servants who draft policies "put them there and expect everything to happen; it's not that easy", he says.

It’s something that parents should be concerned about because, as Schonfeld points out, “unhappy providers make unhappy children”.