“We were just saying the other day: which one of us will give up our job? It’s just not good enough.”
Alice Malone O’Neil, a primary schoolteacher and a mother of three young boys in Kilcullen, Co Kildare, is discussing the dilemma she and her husband face due to the shortage of childcare in the town.
“Our eldest child [Robert], who is almost six years old, he’s finished junior infants now and he attends an after-school childcare facility. However, we were told in April that the facility would no longer cater for first-class pupils, so it’s urgent,” she said.
She explained that both she and her husband, Aaron O’Neil, who is a chef, work away from Kilcullen and do not have family close by or friends who could look after Robert. There is no other after-school childcare facility in Kilcullen, she said. Her other sons are Rory (2) and Evan, who is 10 months old.
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According to Department of Children data on the sector, there were 11,634 children enrolled in early-learning care and school-age childcare services in Co Kildare, with the numbers growing in recent years, including by 22 per cent between 2022 and 2024.
This is not surprising given that Kildare’s population has doubled since 1991. It stood at 247,000 people in 2022, with forecasts suggesting it could exceed 500,000 by 2050.
Some 42 per cent of early-learning and school-age childcare services had at least one vacant place – but an estimated 48 per cent had a waiting list.
“It is important to note,” a department spokesperson said, “that waiting-list data should not be used as a measure of overall demand for [childcare] places ... [as] not all services operate a waiting list .. [and] an individual child may be on multiple waiting lists in different services.”
Areas in Kildare affected by the lack of childcare include Kilcock and Maynooth in the north of the county and farther south in Kilcullen, where parents, including Malone O’Neil and Gina Stenson, have recently founded the Kilcullen Needs Childcare group to campaign for more places. .
“It isn’t just Kilcullen that is affected, but Kilcullen is particularly bad. There are two really good creches in the town but they can only hold so much,” said Stenson, mother to 15-month-old boy Leo.
“I set up the Kilcullen Mums WhatsApp group when I moved back to Kilcullen to try to create that village that they tell you is needed to raise a child,” she said. “There are 70 mams in it now and I arrange nights out, coffees, walks or the WhatsApp is there to swap memes during night feeds to help them ‘create their village’.
“Through that a lot of us were sharing how hard it was to get a childcare place before we went back to work”.
Stenson, who is married to Dan, counts herself as one of the lucky ones who was able to secure a childcare place a few months before she went back to work but there had been a lot of worry.
However, she says a lot of the families from the WhatsApp group are not so lucky and are still waiting: “Some had parents’ that could help. Some could make it work with their partner’s shifts if they reduced their own hours.”
Malone O’Neil explained that while the mothers in the WhatsApp group had different childcare concerns including finding places for babies, for toddlers, and for after school the common issue was childcare: “So, we met Labour TD Mark Wall, who helped us to develop the Kilcullen Needs Childcare group.”
With the assistance of Wall and his office, the group provided an online survey for parents in Kilcullen facing childcare difficulties. By July 31st, 81 families had responded to the survey, which also indicated that 116 children are affected.
Preliminary statistics from the survey also show that most parents are looking for creche or preschool childcare places and that more than a third are looking for aftercare.
Further, nearly half are considering giving up their career, with one in five having already done so. More than 40 per cent have had to reduce their working hours, the majority of whom, according to Wall’s office, are women.
The government has been left with little choice but to admit there is an issue regarding childcare. In early July Wall raised the issue of the lack of childcare in Kilcullen in the Dáil with An Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, who said that the Minister for Children, Norma Foley, would be asked to examine the issue.
There may be good news for parents in Kilcullen, and other areas across the country affected by the lack of childcare.
“The programme for government commits ... to public provision of early learning and childcare through State-led facilities, adding capacity in areas where unmet need exists,” the department spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added that “early scoping work” has been carried out in all counties to explore options to introduce a segment of public provision. “So, Kilcullen and other towns and areas in Kildare are being examined as part of that process.”
However, parents like Malone O’Neil will wonder: “Yes, but will all that be done in time for my child?”
