There are “massive numbers” of creches across Dublin built in compliance with planning conditions for new homes, which are lying unused and unusable, childcare providers have told TDs, and Senators. Stuart Buchanan, head of advocacy and impact at the YMCA – which has been providing creches since 1988 – said across Dublin “you will have what is a reasonably small creche facility put in place to meet the bare bones of a planning requirement”. But he told the Oireachtas Committee on Children and Equality “a number of those, a massive number of those, are sitting empty due to the fact that simply, there is not the scale for those to be viable”. So, “whether that is a commercial operator or a community operator”, if there was not the scale available, or if the creche was not run as part of a larger community centre, it would not be a viable business, he said. Theresa Murphy, a director of Spraoi and Sonas Early Learning Centres, said the problem was visible beyond Dublin. About 213,000 children are enrolled in early learning and childcare services across the State – 850 of them cared for by Spraoi and Sonas she said. Murphy said the problem of appropriate buildings was too visible in Galway, where she said “a creche is required for every development over 70 units”. She instanced the provision of a creche space in a housing development in Galway city, which was “1,650sq ft” (153 sq m). “That’s not a sustainable size for a service. It won’t attract a provider to go in there and operate it, but the developer has ticked the box in terms of doing what they had to do to meet the planning requirements,” she said.
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