Athlone childcare provider forced to close one of its centres due to Covid outbreak

Grovelands Childcare has been forced to close one of its four Athlone branches due to a Covid outbreak among staff.

The childcare provider said today (Monday) that its Corran Riada centre in Monksland, which typically caters for 108 children, was not expected to fully reopen until next week. Nineteen staff members at the centre are currently isolating.

The return of some staff who had previously been isolating will mean that one of the six rooms in the Corran Riada centre can reopen from tomorrow (Tuesday), but the remainder of the facility will not be operational.

Outside of the Corran Riada centre, there are a further 14 staff isolating across the other Grovelands Childcare Plus centres.

Deirdre Bushell, Director of Operations for Grovelands Childcare Plus, told the Westmeath Independent that its Millbrook centre, also in Monksland, had been due to reopen last Thursday but would now reopen tomorrow (Tuesday) for pre-school and after-school.

The Grovelands centre on Athlone's Ballymahon Road reopened this morning. Its IDA Athlone centre reopened last week and returned to offering a full service from today, albeit with slightly reduced opening hours in the evening.

Deirdre said the Grovelands centres had managed to avoid closures due to Covid cases up to now, but the increased transmissibility of the Omicron variant had changed things.

"I think it's important that people are aware of how this variant operates - it isn't the same as previous variants," she said.

"You feel such a sense of responsibility (in taking the decision to close), because you can be responsible for whether or not people get to work, and providers can take that very personally.

"So I think it's important for other centres to know that if they do have rooms closed, or pods closed, they're not alone in that. You can see so many businesses across town who are closed because they don't have enough staff to operate.

"It is outside of providers' control, and I know it's the same in schools. I know of one school on Monday where there were only five children in, out of a class of 23. So it's everywhere at the moment," she said.

* For more, see this week's Westmeath Independent