THE DIRECTORS of a pre-school and creche have been convicted of failing to run the service properly and have been banned from operating another childcare facility for 15 years.
At Tullamore District Court, Judge Catherine Staines said it was a scandal that parents could leave their children in the kind of conditions HSE inspectors found at The Playhouse, a purpose-built pre-school and creche in the Ballin Ri estate, Tullamore, Co Offaly.
She fined the company, whose registered address is 154 Ballin Ri, Tullamore, €3,000 and marked costs against it after the company pleaded guilty to a number of offences under the Childcare Act. The directors were named as Melissa Foran and Patrick Dalton.
Deirdre Molloy, who investigated the premises in June following a complaint from a parent, described how staff brought food for the children on two days when she visited, because provisions for meals had not been delivered.
She described serious failings, including a failure to vet all staff, a lack of toys, an unemptied, overflowing nappy bin and a broken pane of glass in the playroom.
There was not enough furniture, with no chairs for adults to sit and nurse a child and not enough cots for small children; while two children had to stand while they ate in the playroom because there were insufficient chairs to seat them.
There were too few staff and some had not been properly vetted, while there was no record of one student childcare worker on the company’s records.
Adequate records of children’s medical and personal information were not kept. There were no details of one child and attendance records were poorly kept.
Children were unable to play outside because of broken play equipment and so had no fresh air on the first day of inspection.
Convicting and fining the company, Judge Staines said the parent who made the initial complaint should be commended.