City parents in the dark over crèche inspections

By Denise McNamara

Galway parents continue to remain in the dark about the safety and wellbeing of their children in the city’s crèches as the HSE has failed to publish the result of inspections despite a commitment to make them available online over two years ago.

In the wake of shock and outrage over the treatment of toddlers in three crèches in Dublin and Wicklow captured by secret cameras by an RTE Prime Time investigation, Minister Frances Fitzgerald said parents were not powerless in this situation. She advised worried parents to first ask their childcare provider for the latest HSE inspection report and if they were not successful they should contact the HSE for it.

“It’s very important that parents become even more powerful, that they have discussions with their provider, that they monitor, they ask questions, they go in there, they link with the local inspectors,” she told Morning Ireland following the documentary on Tuesday.

In January this year, the Galway City Tribune put in a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the HSE for details of inspections in 2011 and 2012 in the city and county pre-schools, play groups and crèches catering to children aged up to six years under the Child Care Regulations 2006.

The request asked for a list of those organisations which breached the regulations and which regulations they failed to comply with. The request also asked for copies of all complaints made against the centres in the previous two years.

The information was deemed by the Galway and Roscommon area manager for children and family services, Angela Toolis, to warrant between 85 and 112 hours of search and retrieval work and would cost this paper between €1,780 and €2,346.

 “The final charge may be increased if the length of time taken to retrieve exceeds this estimate,” Ms Toolis warned. The request was not pursued.

On the HSE’s own website, it stated that it intends to place reports on inspections of pre-schools. This was posted as far back as May 2011.

Yesterday, similar questions submitted to the HSE went unanswered. In a statement, the HSE published a list of early years’ inspectors in each county. Calls to one listed for Galway in Merlin Park Hospital rang out.

In 2007 a FOI request submitted by the Irish Examiner found that seven out of 10 crèches in Galway did not fully comply with the childcare regulations.

Of the 60 inspections carried out on crèches in Galway between October 2005 and September 2006, only 18 were compliant.

For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.