ECCE ratios don't change just because it's free

Ordinary regulatory ratios still apply in full to an ECCE session; the scheme's funding status doesn't remove or soften Regulation 11. For a full- or part-time day-care service, the statutory ratios are 1:3 for ages 0–1, 1:5 for 1–2, 1:6 for 2–3, and 1:8 for 3–6. Sessional services — which is what most ECCE provision actually is — run a different set: 1:3 for 0–1, 1:5 for 1–2.5, and 1:11 for 2.5–6.

That last figure is the one worth being deliberate about, because it's easy to apply the wrong band to the right age group. A 3-to-6-year-old room can sit under two genuinely different ratios — 1:8 in a full-day-care context, 1:11 in a sessional/ECCE one — for the exact same age range, and the difference isn't cosmetic.

The educator delivering the ECCE session has their own qualification bar, tied to the programme's current rules and Tusla's qualification requirements for the role — kept as certificate-plus-recognition evidence on file, not inferred from a job title.

Bloomffy's ratio engine handles the dual-band problem directly rather than assuming one universal number: a room declares its own program type — full day care or ECCE/sessional — and that declaration is what determines which band applies for the exact same age range, resolved by a pure function that drops the non-matching band and lets the program-specific one override the universal one where they'd otherwise both cover the same ages.

Worth stating plainly rather than glossing over: the qualification side of this isn't fully closed. Staff qualifications are recorded as free text and can capture a Level 6 NFQ Lead Educator credential, but nothing currently cross-references that credential against a room's declared program type to confirm the right qualification is actually present where the ECCE rate requires it. That's a real, acknowledged gap rather than a finished feature — the ratio math is solid, the qualification cross-check isn't built yet.