Cover image for Dublin Inquirer print edition #123
"June is deeply associated with Áine, the Irish goddess of summer, fertility, love, and sovereignty, whose presence is especially felt around the midsummer season."
“For many mothers, the issue is not a lack of ambition, it is wanting to work without being absent from their children’s everyday lives,” says its founder Karla Dragić.
“It shall be a condition of planning that the developer must ensure the facility is fully delivered and operational,” Labour Councillor Mark Boland's motion says.
Nearly 40,000 kids were on waiting lists for creches nationally, including more than 1,000 in Fingal, according to Pobal data.
There needs to be a better system to try to avert creche and afterschool closures, Early Childhood Ireland, which represents creches and afterschools, has said.
One creche, Woodlands, has had to close its waiting list, because there were 280 names on it, says the facility manager, Karen McKernan.
Despite areas of high need, Fingal consistently ranks near the bottom, when comparing ratios of the more affordable community crèches to costlier private ones, in council areas.
Current guidelines make it too easy for developers to build homes without enough viable spaces for childcare providers to operate creches out of, it says.
There are only enough spaces at early learning and childcare centres for roughly one in four children, a report by the group Young People at Risk has found.
Childcare providers can get extra funding to hire special-needs assistants to help kids the right age for ECCE, but not for children who are older or younger than that.
While most childcare providers have taken the first step towards signing up for a key funding scheme involved in the effort, some are hanging back.
Council chief Owen Keegan said he was reluctant for the council to take on a new role. “When we get so much criticism for not doing the things we have responsibility for.”
These were some of the issues Dublin city councillors discussed at recent meetings of their South East, Central, and North Central area committees.