In Lusk, parents struggle to find creche places for their children

Grace Nixon wants to go back to her job.

But she hasn’t been able to overcome the hurdle of finding a full-day creche with space for her two daughters in the Rush-Lusk area, she says.

She had worked in an office for 21 years, she says. “And I loved my job, but I had to leave because my two were too small for me to work.”

Nixon is a single mother, she says. “And I had nowhere to put them.”

The eldest of the two is in pre-school, while the youngest will be starting there in September, she says. “But it’s from a quarter to nine until a quarter to eleven.”

She would need a childminder for the rest of the day and for school breaks, she says. “But a creche could be looking after them all day, and there’d be no to-ing and fro-ing.”

Her girls were only able to get onto one waiting list for Butterflies, a creche on the outskirts of Lusk village, she says. “But if I can’t get that, I’ll still have to not work, and wait until they get into primary school.”

There are 15 childcare facilities in the Lusk area and that figure hasn’t changed in recent years, said Labour Councillor Robert O’Donoghue, at the Balbriggan/Rush-Lusk/Swords Area Committee on 11 April.

Yet demand for those 15 is already considerable, and for the creches in town in particular, of which there are three.

One creche, Woodlands, has had to close its waiting list, because there were 280 names on it, says the facility manager, Karen McKernan.

Lusk and Rush have been promised spaces for creches by housing developers as part of large housing estates. But some developers, whether by selling off land or revising planning permissions, back out on delivering the facilities, O’Donoghue said.

Growing need

At the southern edge of Lusk, by the R127, sits a vacant site within the housing estate known as The Forge.

The site, on Forge Green, neighbours a series of new red-brick semi-detached houses and a small green with a playground.

It is cordoned off by a wooden fence, with the gate leading out onto the footpath by the R127 locked. The grass is overgrown, and covered in construction work materials, breeze blocks, orange pipes, white sacks and wooden pallets.

When Dwyer Nolan Developments Limited set out its plans for The Forge housing estate in 2006, this site was earmarked for a creche.

Fingal County Council granted Dwyer Nolan permission to build the estate, with 169 houses and flats, in June 2007.

Eight years later, in June 2015, Dwyer Nolan submitted a new application, specifically for Forge Court and Green, detailing a residential development of 50 two-storey houses.

The original 2007 planning permission had expired. But most of the houses had already been built under different planning permissions, Dwyer Nolan’s application said, with this new application intended to complete the development.

But a creche wasn’t going to be delivered as part of this phase, the application read. Dwyer Nolan had delivered two childcare facilities nearby in the Dun Emer residential estate, and there were two existing facilities in Orlynn Park.

There was a lack of demand for more childcare facilities, they said, so it wasn’t sustainable to provide a creche to cater for the existing and proposed houses in The Forge.

The council approved that application in July 2015, and the developer ploughed ahead with its work.

By June 2019, houses in The Forge were occupied, images from Google Street view show, and the creche site lay empty.

The 364 square metre commercial site has been listed for sale on the property website Daft.ie.

Practices like this have been an issue for years, not only in the Rush-Lusk area, but across Fingal, said O’Donoghue, the Labour councillor, at the Balbriggan/Rush-Lusk/Swords Area Committee.

Some developers will get their planning permissions for housing estates approved with an attached childcare facility, he said. “[They] build the houses, and then move heaven and earth to get out of providing the childcare facilities.”

Clamping down

“Real hallucino-gymnastics can go on through the likes of revised planning permissions, usually to put a house or two instead of the childcare facility,” said O’Donoghue at the area meeting, tabling a motion that asked what the council could do to guarantee the delivery of the promised creches.

In other cases, when planning permission is sought, and rejected, it never comes back in again for revised planning permission, O’Donoghue said.

He pointed to a two-story creche on the Skerries Road, in Lusk Village, which Charles Reilly of the McGarrell Reilly Group was denied permission by the council to develop in June 2007 due to inadequate parking facilities, a lack of information on its sewerage plan and because the building would overshadow neighbouring residencies.

McGarrell Reilly was also due to deliver a creche as part of the final phase of its Lusk Village Quarter, consisting of shops, restaurants and a public park.

It wasn’t possible to build that final phase, a spokesperson for the developer said. But, they are working on a redesign with the council, including a creche, the planning for which they expect to lodge in the coming months.

O’Donoghue says that Lusk is the second youngest town in the county, and if one of its facilities was to close, “you’re looking at a crisis turning into a disaster”.

Deirdre Fallon, a senior planner in the council’s Planning and Strategic Infrastructure Division, said in a report responding to O’Donoghue’s motion, that under Fingal’s Development Plan for 2023 to 2029, new residential and mixed-use developments require the provision of appropriate childcare facilities.

Residential schemes with 50 or more homes require a developer to submit a community and social infrastructure audit to the Planning Authority, her report said.

At the meeting, Fallon said the council is checking that that happens.

The council’s approach to making sure childcare facilities are delivered is via planning conditions, she said, “requiring that the facility is constructed and ready for operation prior to a certain number of units”.

Once the conditions are in place, it’s up to the Planning Department to liaise with the Enforcement Section if the developer is not delivering the facilities, she said. “As it is, we can’t stop developers making applications for change-of-use from creche facilities.”

But Fingal County Council is aware of the need for creches, she said. “And we’re certainly doing all that we can in the application process to make sure that they’re included and delivered in part of applications and new residential areas.”

Struggling to meet the demand

On Friday, O’Donoghue said one difficulty developers can have is in finding a provider to run the planned facilities.

“I’ve been told that there is no interest from providers, and on the other end, when there is a provider, there’s no facility for them to operate through,” he said.

The council has approved sites for creches, like in The Forge, but the locations just aren’t right, says Eoghan Dockrell, a Fine Gael local area representative in Rush. “The sites are too small, there’s no parking.”

Karen McKernan, who manages the Woodlands Creche and Montessori on Dun Emer Rise in Lusk, had looked into opening a second service in the area, she says.

She had looked into the possibility of developing an afterschool service or creche on the site in The Forge, she said. “But it’s too small for a creche. It is unrealistic. There isn’t enough garden space, and there is no parking.”

It would make absolutely no sense for her, she says.

McKernan has been managing Woodlands, one of three creches in Lusk, for the last six years, and she has actively sought to expand childcare services in the Rush-Lusk area.

The dearth of childcare facilities doesn’t stop at creches. After-school services are a real problem too.

As McKernan sits in her office, explaining this effort and the lack of viable options, Christine Riordan, the mother of two children currently in the creche, enters.

Riordan lives in Dun Emer, and her kids are super happy at the creche, she says. “But, my eldest is now about to age out of it, and there are very few childcare or aftercare services around here.”

McKernan, meanwhile, is dealing with a surge in demand for spaces in Woodland.

In the past few days, she has had to close the waiting list for spaces in the creche, she says. “I have about 280 expressions of interest forms.”

Woodlands can take 75 children, she says. “So, four times the amount are on my waiting list.”