What does Tusla actually inspect?

Who inspects, and under what law

Every pre-school and school-age childcare service in Ireland, Montessori, creche, full daycare, sessional playschool, after-school, is registered and regulated by Tusla's Early Years Inspectorate, under the Child Care Act 1991 (Early Years Services) Regulations 2016 (with a separate set of regulations for school-age services introduced in 2018). Registration and ongoing compliance with these regulations are the legal basis for every inspection.

Inspections aren't all the same type. A registration inspection happens before a new service opens. After that, services are subject to ongoing inspection which can be a full inspection, covering the whole regulatory framework, or a focused or themed inspection looking at one specific area, such as safety or governance, often prompted by the service's history or a particular concern.

The four areas inspectors assess

However an inspection is scoped, it draws from the same four broad areas of the regulations.

1. Governance and management

This covers whether the service is being run the way it says it is: written policies and procedures, a complaints procedure, appropriate insurance, staff recruitment and induction, and record keeping generally. Regulation 9 (Management and Recruitment) sits mostly here, alongside the requirement that all staff, volunteers and contractors in direct contact with children complete induction training.

2. Health, welfare and development of the child

This is about the child's actual day: nutrition, rest, play and learning opportunities, and whether each child's individual needs, developmental, medical, allergy-related, are being met and recorded. Individual care plans for children with medical or allergy needs are assessed here, alongside evidence that staff are following them.

3. Safety

Premises, equipment, fire safety, risk assessments and supervision arrangements. Inspectors will look at whether risk assessments exist and are current, not just whether a fire safety certificate is on file. The practical, day-to-day application of safety policy matters as much as the paperwork.

4. Staffing

Adult-to-child ratios (Schedule 6), qualifications, Garda vetting and ongoing training. Full daycare settings must have a minimum of two adults on the premises at all times, and a person holding a recognised paediatric first aid qualification must be on site whenever children are present. Every staff member working directly with children needs at least a Level 5 major award in Early Childhood Care and Education, or an equivalent.

What happens on the day

Inspections of an already-registered service are typically unannounced. The inspector arrives without prior notice, so the service is seen operating under normal conditions rather than a prepared version of itself. The inspector will observe practice directly, review the specific records relevant to the areas being assessed, and speak with staff. They'll ask the registered provider to produce records on request rather than working from a pre-agreed list, so records that exist but take time to locate don't reflect well, even if they're technically present.

The specific records an inspector is likely to ask for are covered in detail in our companion article, What Records Must a Childcare Service Keep in Ireland?

What happens afterwards

The Inspectorate produces a draft inspection report listing findings against each regulation assessed as either Compliant or Non-Compliant. Where a non-compliance is identified, the provider is invited to submit a Corrective and Preventive Action (CAPA) response, a plan setting out what will be done and by when. The majority of non-compliances are resolved this way.

The published outcome is typically an IP02 report for the initial inspection, and where a follow-up inspection is required, an IP05 report detailing what's improved, what's still outstanding, and any further action needed. If issues aren't resolved through this process, or where a significant risk to children is identified, the matter can be escalated to the National Registration and Enforcement Panel.

Practical advice

1. Read the regulations against your own service at least once a year, not just before an inspection. The four-area structure above is a reasonable checklist to work through.
2. Keep records where they'd actually be found quickly on the day, not spread across paper files, personal phones and separate spreadsheets.
3. Treat risk assessments and policies as living documents with review dates, not one-off documents written at registration.
4. If a non-compliance is identified, respond with a genuine CAPA rather than a minimal one. Inspectors follow up, and a thin response tends to generate more scrutiny, not less.

How Tot Tracker helps

Tot Tracker doesn't change what Tusla inspects. It exists to make the records behind each of the four areas easy to produce on request. Staff qualifications and vetting expiries are tracked with alerts before they lapse, rotas show ratio coverage for the actual sessions run (not just planned), care plans are e-signed and refreshed on a schedule, and attendance, incidents and consents are all timestamped and attributable to a specific staff member. None of it replaces good practice. It just means the evidence of good practice is where an inspector, or you, can actually find it.

Frequently asked questions