Quick summary
- Regulation 16 requires a specific list of written records, covering staff, ratios, programme, attendance, rosters, medication and incidents.
- Records relating to a child are generally kept for 2 years from the date they stop attending.
- There's no requirement to keep records on paper, digital records are fine if they're secure and retrievable on request.
- Services claiming ECCE, Core Funding or NCS have additional record-keeping needs on top of the Tusla-mandated list.
- Good practice goes further than the statutory minimum, particularly around consent for photography, outings and medication.
The Regulation 16 list
Regulation 16(1) sets out what a registered provider must keep as written records. In plain terms, that's:
- The name, position, qualifications and experience of the person in charge, and of every employee, unpaid worker and contractor.
- The class of service provided and the age profile of the children attending.
- The adult-to-child ratios maintained.
- The type of care or programme provided, and the facilities available.
- Opening hours and fees.
- Policies and procedures.
- Attendance by each pre-school child, recorded daily.
- Staff rosters, recorded daily.
- Any medication administered to a child, with signed parental consent.
- Any accident, injury or incident involving a child attending the service.
Two things stand out about this list. First, it's specific: "attendance by each child, daily" is a higher bar than a weekly summary. Second, staffing and attendance records are meant to be read together: a roster on its own shows who was scheduled, and attendance on its own shows how many children were present, but it's the two together that demonstrate a ratio actually held for a given session.
How long to keep records
Records relating to a child are generally required to be retained for 2 years from the date the child stops attending the service. This is worth building into your process deliberately. It's easy to archive or delete records at the point a family leaves, when the requirement is actually to hold onto them for a further two years after that.
For record types outside the specific Regulation 16 list, insurance documents, Garda vetting, financial records, retention periods are often set by other requirements (insurer conditions, Revenue rules, the National Vetting Bureau) rather than the early years regulations themselves. Check the specific requirement for each record type instead of assuming a single retention period covers everything.
Records that support funding claims
If your service participates in ECCE, Core Funding or NCS, there's a second layer of record-keeping on top of the Tusla list, because each scheme needs evidence that what's being claimed matches what actually happened. In practice this means:
- Attendance records detailed enough to show hours attended, not just days present, needed to support NCS hour tracking and ECCE capitation.
- Fee schedules for each child showing how ECCE, Core Funding and any NCS subsidy have been applied.
- Parental agreements and CHICK code details for any child with an NCS award.
This is the exact information a dedicated NCS Inspection report is built to pull together, because it's requested often enough to be worth a standing report, not manual compilation each time.
Good practice beyond the statutory minimum
Regulation 16 is a floor, not a ceiling. Most well-run services also keep, as a matter of good practice rather than explicit statutory obligation:
- Signed parental consent for photography, outings, and anything outside routine daily care.
- Individual care plans for allergies and medical conditions, reviewed and re-signed periodically, not just once at enrolment.
- A record of authorised collectors for each child, with any changes tracked.
- Observation and learning records against Aistear, showing each child's developmental progress over time.
- Complaints records, even where a complaint was resolved informally.
None of these are optional in practice. They're exactly the kind of evidence that supports the governance, welfare and safety areas an inspector assesses, even where the regulation doesn't name the document specifically.
Practical advice
- Record attendance and administered medication at the time they happen, not retrospectively. Same-day entry is far more defensible than an end-of-week catch-up.
- Store records so a specific child's full file, enrolment, care plan, attendance, incidents, can be produced as one set, not assembled from several places under time pressure.
- Set a calendar reminder for the 2-year-post-departure retention window instead of relying on memory.
- If you're digital, make sure records are backed up and that someone other than the owner can access them if needed. A system only one person can operate is a single point of failure at exactly the wrong moment.
How Tot Tracker helps
Every record on the Regulation 16 list, staff details, ratios, attendance, rosters, medication, incidents, has a corresponding place in Tot Tracker, recorded at the time it happens rather than reconstructed afterwards. A child's full record (enrolment, care plan, attendance, incidents, consents) sits under their profile as one set, and the dedicated NCS Inspection report pulls together the funding-related records, attendance, fee schedules, agreements, for any date range on request.