Childcare providers are warning that more funding will be needed to ensure providers can stay open.
While representative groups have welcomed the guidelines announced yesterday, they're also raising concerns that financial issues will arise if fewer children are able to return to each crèche.
The guidelines unveiled yesterday confirmed that children will be grouped into ‘play-pods’ when childcare services resume at the end of June
Frances Byrne from Early Childhood Ireland told Newstalk Breakfast with Susan Keogh that different crèches will have different capacities to follow the new guidelines.
She said: "Our members will be focused on, for the next week or so, sitting down with the guidelines, looking at their rooms, and seeing how workable it is.
"For some, it will be quite workable and may even feel somewhat business as usual - although obviously trying to contain children within their pod, particularly young children, will need to be looked at in terms of the physical layout of rooms and so on.
"But for some crèches it will provide a challenge, particularly for smaller ones who don't have a lot of room. They'll really need to take some time to decide if they can manage this."
Ms Byrne said childcare is already a "very fragile" sector and under-invested in compared to other European countries.
She also said it's not yet clear how many parents will want their children to return to childcare.
She told Susan: "The certainty was welcome yesterday around the pods - at least it gives people a few weeks to plan.
"But the funding issue remains unresolved, and it will need to be resolved by the current Government and potentially the incoming one as well."
Childcare provider group Seas Suas has separately raised concerns about funding.
The organisation said: “Guidelines will not meet our significant costs, overheads and don’t pay bills. Mortgages, salaries, utilities and more must be paid for in order to operate. That is before a single euro is spent on COVID-19 related safety requirements.
"Unless and until we get a whole of government response, childcare simply cannot return and thus the ability of our whole economy to get back to work is dented."
