Straight faces at Giggles Crèche

IT was no laughing matter for the parents who turned up to collect their children attending Giggles Crèche in Dublin yesterday.

They had just found out that the owner of the crèche on the Tolka Road had been fined €1,200 in the Dublin District Court for failing to ensure the health, safety and welfare of a child.

The child, a three-year-old boy, had been left behind during an outing to a nearby public park. He was later found playing happily on a swing, oblivious to the panic around him.

Most of the parents who came to collect their children yesterday refused to talk about the court case and those who did pronounced that they were very happy with the level of care their children received at the crèche. Some said they did not believe that the little boy had been left behind in the park.

One man who came to collect two toddlers used very abusive language in front of his children when asked if he wished to comment on the development.

The crèche is a single-storey annex to a house facing nearby Clonliffe Road. All of the window shutters were pulled down yesterday afternoon when it was still light and the children were inside. Staff were refusing to comment.

One woman who came to collect her three-year-old son said that while she was happy to leave him in the crèche she would not give permission to have him go on an outing in the care of the staff.

“That is my view as a teacher, irrespective of what happened to the other little boy, because I know how difficult it is to mind little children once they are outside,” she said. While she was happy that the care her son was receiving in the crèche was “excellent”, she admitted that cost was a factor.

The woman, a single mother who lives in Swords, Co Dublin, is paying €690 a month to have her son minded in the crèche. It would cost her €200 more a month for her son to attend a crèche just down the road from her home.

Josephine Adu from Drumcondra, who came to pick up her daughter Jasmine, five, said she would continue to leave her child in the crèche as she had been doing for the past three years. “She is well looked after and is happy when I come to collect her,” she said.

Fionnuala Kennedy, also from Drumcondra, who came to collect her two young children, said she had known the owner, Anne Davy, for four years and had always been happy to leave her children with her.

The owner, who denied leaving the little boy in the playground of Fairview Park, was also convicted of failing to keep adequate staff rosters and child attendance records for which no penalties were attached.