‘I THINK PARENTS WILL REALISE MORE FULLY ALL THAT IS DONE IN A CRECHE’
RUTH and Gary O’Sullivan’s new balancing act of working from home while minding two young children has been quite a challenge.
They are among thousands of couples throughout Ireland who lost their childminding services at the same time as being told they had to carry out their work duties from home.
Ruth is a teacher at Newpark Comprehensive School in Blackrock, Dublin. Gary’s sales job for a UK firm means regular trips to England from their home near Newtownmountkennedy in Co Wicklow.
With the scheduled reopening of creches for essential workers next month and a general reopening in July, Ruth and Gary are hoping the resumption will be achieved as planned.
Their elder daughter,
Mia (2), loves going to the Little Explorers creche in Newtownmountkennedy and it is planned her nine-monthold sister, Zoe, will join her there in September.
“If the creches are not back fully open by September, I would have to consider taking unpaid parental leave, which would mean a huge hole in our budget,” said Ruth.
“The creche is vital for us. We are not really in a financial position for one of us to give up work to mind the kids full-time. And we really like our jobs,” said Gary.
They feel lucky that during normal times, both sets of grandparents volunteered for childminding duties for one day each a week. But the creche had a central role in their lives.
Ruth was on maternity leave following the birth of Zoe and had resumed her teaching job at Newpark at Easter when she had to adapt quickly to online teaching for a cohort of pupils who have additional needs.
Gary said: “We have a joint calender so when I have sales calls online, or Ruth has online meetings, we can co-ordinate those so they don’t overlap. But you can’t tell the kids to stay quiet for two hours. We 100pc need the creche. I was in the UK one day a week and Ruth has to go to school. If I’m working from home in sales and I get a customer call, I have to be focused on that. You can’t do that and have kids running around.”
Ruth said that even if creches were open for just a few hours a day in the beginning, it would help provide parents with valuable respite.
“I believe the creches will have to start slow because everything can’t just open all at once because then we could be back to square one. There’s no point in doing all the hard work of the lockdown just to have a freefor-all. So it will have to start slow,” she said.
“I’m very much a silverlining type of person and not having the creche has made me appreciate it much more. They are an amazing resource and definitely underappreciated. I think the pay for creche workers definitely should go up.
“They are the first providers of care, other than parents, and they are highly qualified. Yet they are not treated the same as teachers. I think that parents now, who have had their twoyear-old ‘glued’ to their leg over the last few weeks, will realise more fully all that is done in a creche.”
Changes in creches could send costs “through the roof” and how, asked Gary, will those costs be met?