Childcare crunch for Mayo parents as lack of places forces hard decisions

A buggy brigade assembled in the party room of The Wild West in Westport last Friday afternoon.

This gathering of mothers and babies was there to meet with Westport TD, Keira Keogh, about childcare costs, and in particular childcare access.

The sound of a school group running around and having the times of their lives in the play centre faded into the background as an air of frustration and helplessness descended over the room.

“I am forced to work part-time. I want to go to work to provide for the family. My husband goes to work as well. I also enjoy work. I love my work. It stimulates me in a variety of ways that are needed, especially for a mom, and now suddenly I am forced to either go part-time, even less hours, or quit, you know, so that is the problem. And I think, yes, I'm a bit bitter about the situation,” Kamila Visser, mother-of-two, and part-time tech worker tells The Mayo News.

Her youngest child goes to a childminder and it costs €50 a day: “You do the maths, it's €250 a week and €1000 a month.”

The six month gap between the end of maternity leave and a childcare place accepting a child is very much on the mind of first time mother, Maria Harrington.

Struggling

“I started looking into it when I found out I was pregnant fairly early on, because I had talked to mothers at the time and fathers, and they had said that they were struggling to get childcare. And the further I looked into it, the further hurdles I thought I was going to be reaching.

“You should be able to enjoy your maternity leave with your newborn, but unfortunately, this is going to be a massive, massive hurdle for us. So just, yeah, I don't really know what else to do.

“It’s stressful. I'm nearly four months into my maternity leave of six months, and I've gotten nothing. I have a two and half year gap until she gets to preschool that I am struggling with.”

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Marita Shannon is the owner of Tigh Na Leanai Creche in Kiltimagh. It's a big facility that employs sixteen people and cares for 120 children.

“I have women on the phone crying to me, so desperate and concerned that they are going to lose their jobs if they can't get back to work. There is a huge crisis in childcare. You can't get the places. I would have expanded. I would have applied for the Building Blocks Extension Scheme. But why would I apply for a grant when I've had to shut down one room already due to a staffing shortage?”

Marita often finds out about pregnancy news before even the grandparents, such is the rush to get babies on a childcare waiting list.

“Unfortunately, I'm telling them there's little or no hope, even at that early stage because of the waiting list. I have people that have been on the waiting list for two years and we can't get them in.

Funding

“The main problem with it all is the government, which I 100 percent agree with, gave all this funding to parents for childcare. They did not check with childcare providers to see that there were places for all of these children. A lot of parents pulled their children out of child minders, who don't qualify for this funding, and put them into any childcare places that were available.”

Childcare is a priority for Westport TD and Chair of the Oireachtas Children's Committee, Keira Keogh.

She has been in contact with the Department about what can be done and says: “We need some out of the box solutions and targeted efforts here to get more places to open up and to get more places, especially baby rooms.

“The government is carrying out its scoping exercise around more state funded buildings and state funded services, which I think is also needed in this space, without cutting out private providers completely.”