Pre-School Inspection Reports on Pobal.ie

It was announced back in June of last year that all inspection reports of crèches were to be published online as soon as they were provided to the crèches themselves. This week Frances Fitzgerald TD, Minister for Children & Youth Affairs, outlined to the Dáil how much progress her Department and the newly created Child and Family Agency have made so far in implementing the pre-school quality agenda.

She said that as of today (11/2/14), there are 2,530 pre-school inspection reports now online on the website pobal.ie. The Minister also announced ongoing recruitment by the Child and Family Agency of early years inspectors to fill five current vacancies.

Here at Schooldays.ie we had a look at the pobal website and found it a little difficult to locate the reports and to navigate the site. So we've put together below a few screen shots to help you locate the information on visiting pobal.ie

In order to access the reports you need to access the Pobal site from your computer - it doesn't appear to work properly if you try and access from mobile devices or tablets.

The second thing you need to know is that to use the site you need to have Microsoft Silverlight on your computer. Most of our computers appeared to have this installed already but if you don't have it, you can download it for free using the link on the pobal website on http://maps.pobal.ie


Once Silverlight is installed and the tab that is open is refreshed/restarted you will see a map of Ireland with a column on the left.
If you want to see all the Pre-Schools in your area you can click on the 'Pobal Programmes' folder in that column and then select the box beside 'Childcare Services' (See red arrow)



However if you know the Pre-School you want to see a report on, you will have to click on the TUSLA logo (see green arrow above ).

An alert will pop up saying 'the list of these facilities is available in the Childcare Facility Name dropdown menu which appears in the next section'

Once you have finished reading the warning, and click on OK, you will be given the option of choosing a county from a pop-up box in the middle of the screen.


Once you have chosen a county you will be given the option of choosing a pre-school



Select the pre-school and click on 'Search'. The map then zooms to the location of that pre-school on the map
The details of the pre-school, including contact name, full address, whether it is community or private, phone number & whether it is participating in ECCE, CETS & CCS are all shown.

At the bottom of the profile will be a link to the Inspection Reports (PDF) and you can also see any correspondence the owner had with the HSE following the inspection.