Documents you need to work in an Irish crèche
Irish crèches must keep careful records for every member of staff, so being organised with your documents can help you start work much sooner. Here’s what crèches will usually ask you for:
- Your childcare qualification: your certificate and, if you trained outside Ireland, your qualification recognition letter.
- Photo ID: a passport or national ID card, which also shows your right to work in Ireland.
- Garda vetting: arranged by the crèche that hires you. You’ll receive an invitation to complete an online form.
- Police certificates: from any country where you’ve lived for a significant time.
- References: usually two, ideally including your most recent childcare employer.
- Children First training: Tusla’s free ‘Introduction to Children First’ eLearning certificate.
- Your PPS number: needed for your employer to pay you correctly.
- Useful extras: Paediatric First Aid, manual handling, and food safety (HACCP) training for roles that involve preparing food.
Complete Children First now, it’s free
Tusla’s ‘Introduction to Children First’ eLearning programme takes about 1.5 hours, can be done in several sittings, and is completely free. When you finish, you’ll receive a certificate of completion by email. Crèches value it highly, and it shows you understand child safeguarding in Ireland.
Once you’ve finished, log in to your crechestaff.ie profile and add ‘Children First (Tusla)’ to your skills, so crèches can find you.