Rachana Nagaraja was told she ‘might have a chance next September’ – ‘and I think that’s because I cried’Carrie O’Hanlon and Rachana Nagaraja at Tramore, Co Waterford. Photograph: Patrick Browne Tue Aug 11 2026 - 06:00 • 4 MIN READRachana Nagaraja was scheduled to return to work this week after the birth of her first baby, but it won’t be happening because she has a problem: childcare.“I have applied and knocked [at] every single door of a childcare place in Tramore and nearby to Tramore. They only say that I might have a chance next September (2027), nothing sooner. They don’t confirm next September, they only say they are going [to] try, and I think that’s because I cried in a few places. I don’t want to quit my job.”Nagaraja is relatively new to Ireland, having moved from India. She had little sense of the shortage of childcare places here, but her husband, Amogha, told her early in her pregnancy that they would need to start applying to crèches immediately.They were living in Dungarvan at the time and had the opportunity to buy a house in Tramore, so they had to start from scratch.“We had no clue we might find this house and move here, but once we did, childcare was my first priority.“Now, I’m having to do everything so I don’t have to quit my job (with Uisce Éireann). I’m taking my unpaid leave, taking my parents’ leave and I’m trying to take my annual leave so that overall, I wouldn’t have to return until February. But I want to work. I love my job. And I don’t want to lose my career.”Even stretching her time away until February leaves a seven-month gap, and she doesn’t know how she will bridge it. Though her husband has a good job, her salary is needed, she says, to help cover costs and the new mortgage. She says it is possible almost all of it will go to childcare. She would accept that, she says, but right now, she doesn’t even have the option.Nagaraja is one of a group of parents in Tramore who have been working in recent months to highlight the town’s status as one of the country’s childcare black spots.Carrie O’Hanlon, currently on unpaid leave from a job in pharma sales, says a friend asked her to go to a meeting back in April, “and I thought half the town would be there”. Instead, there were two other mothers, but they resolved to work together on the issue.A subsequent meeting attracted a much bigger crowd. They then undertook a survey which found Tramore has a serious shortage of places, with family and friends being extensively relied upon to plug gaps, something Nagaraja is not in a position to do.O’Hanlon and her husband, Denis, have two girls: Isobel, who is to start in a creche in September, and Rose, who will be four that month and has care under a combination of preschool hours and other programmes that will take her up to 1.30pm each day. “After that, I have nothing for her, and the reality is that if I don’t find something, her grandparents will end up taking her five afternoons a week so I can go back to work. They shouldn’t have to do that, but I’m lucky it’s an option. A lot of the people I know don’t have family nearby.”Rachana Nagaraja and Carrie O’Hanlon. Photograph: Patrick Browne O’Hanlon says some parents end up sending their young children to crèches 20 minutes away in Waterford city. This, she says, can work well enough until the children “start in primary school back in Tramore and have no friends”.An initial focus of the group was a purpose-built space in a residential development at Cluain Larach in Tramore sitting empty. However, creche owners who attended the second public meeting explained it was too small to be viable. “So what we need here is some joined-up thinking between the department, planners and providers,” O’Hanlon says. “Because there have been about 400 new homes in the town over the past three years and it’s continuing to grow.”The survey suggested a need for at least 150 places in the town. Pobal’s more recent figures indicate up to 986 children under three on waiting lists across the county.Sinéad Whelan and her husband Andrew Daly moved home to Tramore after 10 years in Abu Dhabi when their daughter, Doireann, was nine months old. It took them 14 months to secure her a childcare place.Whelan is really happy with the one she got, but she is expecting her second child in October and has no idea when she will get a place for them.“Almost as soon as we found out I was pregnant, it was a case of speaking to the childcare provider and trying to put a name down ... even though there wasn’t even a name. But they sort of said: ‘Look, you can’t until the baby is born.’ So, as soon as the baby is born in October we’ll be sharing the news with our families and our childcare provider.”Whelan, who works in marketing and whose husband is a teacher, points to the particular challenges regarding baby rooms and is sympathetic to the case made by providers that they are routinely uneconomic because of the required staff-to-child ratios.“So we are hoping to get a place around the 14-month stage, but that means I have to eke out my leave from work until then. But if my work can’t accommodate that, then thankfully I know my mam and Andrew’s mam will generously step up, but they should be able to enjoy just being grannies.“I see families having to hire childminders even though there isn’t the same Government funding for that,” she says, “but the kids have to get minded so what can you do? It does feel like the whole system is a bit broken.” IN THIS SECTION