The first in a series of creches set up under a Government-funded pilot scheme to encourage businesses to provide childcare for their employees will expand its services this year.
Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin, is one of 21 employers involved in the project which is helping women return to work after childbirth at a time when the labour market is suffering skills and labour shortages, and the lack of childcare provision has reached crisis level.
The hospital's on-site creche, Kiddies' Kingdom, has 28 children and plans to begin a Montessori programme next autumn.
Under the two-year Employer Demonstration Childcare Initiative, businesses including Esat Digifone, Aer Rianta, Limerick University, Ballyfermot Partnership, Galway City Partnership and Fujisawa Ireland in Co Kerry have formed eight consortiums to establish one creche each.
The facilities receive start-up funding from Government and EU funds, with matching capital provided by employers. The £1 million project began in April, and creches are at various stages of development, from identifying a site and seeking planning permission to completion. Some creches plan to offer out-of-school and after-school services for children up to 13 years, as well as pre-school provision.
The scheme is part of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform's £6 million Equal Opportunities Childcare Programme designed to support communities in disadvantaged areas and employers providing childcare facilities.
The project manager of Kiddies' Kingdom, Ms Liz O'Sullivan, said the creche has proved popular with hospital staff who can visit their children during lunch and tea breaks. Five mothers told her they would not have been able return to work had the workplace creche not been available. The creche costs £70 a week for full-time care, and Ms O'Sullivan said it hopes to be self-financing when it is at full capacity by early next year.
The employers' organisation, IBEC, which is part of a four-member consortium providing the only city-centre creche in the project, said there had been a high level of interest from employers in the past six months in childcare issues, but there were financial and practical problems for businesses in providing childcare facilities.
Its assistant director, Ms Aileen O'Donoghue, said the childcare initiative was "a learning exercise for us. We have got eight pilot projects and can see the problems and barriers which they are all going through . . . What we are trying to do is to say, look, even smaller companies can get involved in this through a consortium and a collaborative approach. We are trying to establish different models and we are hoping to prove that it can be done. It's do-able, but it's not the most pain-free process."
IBEC, which has published a booklet on how to help the childcare industry to grow, plans to publish a report on the pitfalls of the pilot creche project also.
Ms O'Donoghue said measures in the Budget aimed at encouraging employer participation in childcare provision did not go far enough. The presumption that employers should get involved in an operational level in childcare in order to qualify for the incentives was "not a runner" for small businesses which lacked relevant expertise.
A recent report by the Partnership 2000 Expert Working Group on Childcare showed that demand for childcare would increase by up to 50 per cent by the year 2011. To meet the growth in the labour force by this date, at least 40,000 more childcare places will be required, according to Government figures.
The Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs, Mr Ahern, recently said he hoped the next Budget would include a package of measures such as tax-free allowances for childcare and increases in child benefit.