A mother told yesterday of her shock when she arrived to pick up her three-year-old child from a creche to find he had been left behind during an outing to a public park.
Denise McGrane raced with one of the creche staff to find her son, Nathan, still playing on a swing, oblivious to the panic around him.
"All I could think was 'was he dead?' He was in a park along a main road . . . am I ever going to see him again? I ran for my life that day," Ms McGrane said recalling July 30th last when she went to pick up Nathan from Giggles Creche and Montessori, Tolka Road, Dublin.
The owner of the creche, Anne Davy, yesterday denied breaching regulations governing the operation of pre-schools by leaving the child unattended in the playground of Fairview Park. She also denied not having adequate adult supervision during the outing in accordance with her insurance policy, and failing to keep adequate staff rosters, child attendance and accident report records. She claimed a member of staff was with Nathan at all times.
Dublin District Court heard Ms McGrane was waiting outside the creche at around 12.25pm to pick up Nathan after he was due to return from an outing to the park. Two members of staff, including Nathan's Montessori teacher, Deirdre Fahy, arrived back with 16 children, including five pre-schoolers.
When Ms Fahy realised Nathan was not with the other group, she "started panicking", Ms McGrane said. Both ran back to the park in five minutes where they found Nathan on a swing.
"Deirdre grabbed Nathan and put her arms around him, she was crying. Anne [Davy] arrived in her car and we got into it and Deirdre was crying all the way back to the creche," Ms McGrane said. She denied seeing another member of staff, Mary Quinn, sitting on a bench in the playground watching Nathan.
"I was shocked, not blind," she said. Apart from the fact that the playground is next to a very busy road, there was also heavy machinery using the park as part of the Dublin Port Tunnel works, she said.
The boy's father, Vincent, went to see Ms Davy later that day and told her they were taking the child out. "She [Ms Davy] started crying and said he [Nathan] should never have been left in the park on his own and that they will never take the children out again."
Maire Farrell, a pre-school officer with the Northern Area Health Board, said the recommended guideline for the adult to child ratio in creches was 1:8 but that during outings, it was "best practice and common sense" to reduce this to 1:3. There had only been two adults with 16 children on the day.
Ms Davy told the court that Nathan had never been left unattended. She was with two other staff members on the outing, but had to return to the creche briefly to get a lunch-box for another child who had forgotten his. The other two teachers had left with the rest of the children and she had asked Ms Quinn, who was on her lunchbreak at the time, to "sit with" Nathan.
She denied she had "made up a lie" to cover up a mistake. "Nathan was never at any stage left behind," she said.
Ms Quinn told the court that she was looking after Nathan in the playground when Ms McGrane and his teacher arrived. She did not say anything to them as she felt her job was done when they came and as she was still on her lunchbreak, she walked off.
The case continues tomorrow.