Staff in fear at crumbling Letterkenny crèche

Staff at a crèche in Letterkenny are fearful that the walls of their facility could crumble.

Walls and floors of the Letterkenny Community Childcare Centre building at Lisnennan are showing visible cracks due to the presence of MICA.

The facility caters for 190 children and employs 28 staff with over 400 children on a waiting list. The waiting list includes the names of 115 babies whose families are looking for places between now and September, 2024.

“You can hear the cracking and it’s so scary,” Geraldine Burke, the centre manager, told Donegal Live. “You just think all the time: ‘What next?’ After a bad weekend in February, the wall outside my office froze and when the sun came out, a part of the wall fell off.

'Back in time' with Austin cars at Glen Head

Upon seeing three Austin 12 cars in Glencolmcille this week, the quick-thinking Margaret Rose Cunningham knew there was one photo she had to stage - and got it

“The cracking can be heard and if there are high winds you’d hear the roof going too.”

The building has a short life span and the operators estimate that it could be deemed unusable within the next two years. The building is assessed every six months with the next inspection due in September.

“We had someone who visited us on Tuesday and they couldn’t believe how wide the cracks are getting,” Ms Burke said. “We can see the change every time the temperature changes. The cracks get bigger with the heat and with the cold. We have cracks on three floors and there are cracks on quite a few of the walls, both internally and externally.

“One of the walls that is badly cracked is a load-bearing wall. It’s holding up the roof of the building and we just don’t know how long that it will last.”

Letterkenny Community Childcare Centre - a registered not-for-profit charity - has been in operation for 40 years and they have been in their current location for the last 20 years with 160 families currently availing of their services.

The floor in the toddler room is cracked and there are real fears over what the future holds.

The organisation would need €2.5 million to buy a site identified and develop a new facility. A GoFundMe page has been established in an attempt to help bridge the funding deficit.

“We really need to relocate,” Ms Burke said. “We need to increase our capacity. There are parents here who couldn’t go to work without childcare and if we were to go, the lack of childcare means these children would have nowhere to go.”