By William O’Toole
The announcement that creche facilities at Adult Learning Centres in Arklow, Wicklow and Bray are to close at the end of the current academic year has been met with shock.
The Kildare and Wicklow Education and Training Board (KWETB) have said that the facilities will close due to a lack of funding and they will be offering redundancy or redeployment to staff currently employed at the facilities.
The announcement will come as a blow to people looking to return to education as the facilities had allowed parents to leave their children at the centres while they attended their course.
Councillor Jimmy O’ Shaughnessy said the decision to close the facilities will have a massive impact on people looking to further their education in the future.
“These facilities have been the lifeblood of the centres. They allowed parents to return to education and know that their children would be looked after as well.
“I’d be worried that when they close you could see a drop off in parents returning to education and that would be a bad thing,” he said.
KWETB plan to put a tender out on the facilities to see if a private operator can be found to take over the creches.
They also said in a statement that they had done everything in their power to keep them open but due to cutbacks it became impossible to run them.
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