High Court actions amounting to a total of €615,000 have been settled for over 40 children who pursued a lawsuit against Hyde and Seek creche childcare for alleged mistreatment. Each child received €15,000, a settlement that Mr Justice Paul Coffey approved in the High Court while highlighting the distressing nature of these cases. The court-ordered agreements, achieved via mediation, were settled without accepting any wrongdoing and the children’s identities remain undisclosed by the court’s order.
John Gordon SC, guided by Coleman Legal Solicitors, disclosed to the court that the 41 cases were initiated because of the RTÉ Investigates documentary aired in 2019. The RTÉ Investigates crew secretly investigated the quality of care at the family-managed preschool, which ran several facilities in Dublin.
Gordon SC indicated that the children implicated in these cases were extremely young and pre-verbal. They mostly attended the creche for 50 hours weekly. The claim was that the children experienced unsatisfactory treatment and developed resistance to attending the creche, allegedly due to overcrowding and low-quality food, which left them hungry after returning home.
The same experience was reported by each set of parents, who then had their children assessed. Notably, all children demonstrated enough resilience to overcome the incident and were expected to fully recover in due course. The resolution brought to the cases deals respectably with the claims, and each case was awarded the maximum €15,000 as per judicial guidelines.
Via their parents, the children raised lawsuits against the owners and operators of Hyde and Seek, namely Hyde & Seek Childcare Ltd and Hyde & Seek Glasnevin Ltd, registered on Tolka Road, Drumcondra, Dublin. Furthermore, they also sued Anne Davy, husband Peter Davy, and daughter Siobhán Davy from Lindsay Road, Drumcondra, Dublin, who were directors at Hyde and Seek.
rAll parties involved refuted all the claims brought against them in each case. The Hyde & Seek Childcare is owned and managed by the Davy family: Anne, Peter, and their daughter Siobhán.
In 2022, Anne Davy (69), former director of Hyde and Seek childcare, was made to pay a fine of €4,000 by the Dublin District Court due to her breaching of childcare laws. Although she pleaded guilty to three offences, her daughter, Siobhán Davy, also a director, and the Hyde & Seek creche company were not pursued legally.
On May 8th, 2019, DVR Davy admitted to carrying out disrespectful practices at her Creche on Tolka Road, contradicting section 19.3 of the Child Care Act 1991 (Early Years Services) Regulations 2016. Moreover, she confessed to having insufficient child-room ratios at the Shaw Street branch.
The court was informed that the creche saw 46 children on September 11th, 2018, and 35 on July 19th, 2019, despite only being sanctioned for 32.
In a separate case heard at the High Court on a Friday, a settlement for €15,000 was reached regarding an 8-year-old boy. The boy attended the Hyde and Seek creche on Tolka Road, Drumcondra, from October 2016 when he was nine months old.
The boy’s parents began noticing bruises on his legs and raised the issue with the creche but their concerns were dismissed. There were further concerns raised about the boy’s behaviour and unappeased hunger, along with his distress during drop-off and disturbed night sleep. Upon returning home, he would have a heavily soiled nappy.
The parents decided to move the boy to a local creche for a period and found his behaviour had notably improved.
In the case heard, it was alleged that the boy, while at the creche, was subjected to erratic and chaotic care conditions leading to emotional disruption, forming the basis of the claim in July 2019.
The accusations made also implicated an insufficiency in addressing the lad’s fundamental needs, asserting that they did not appropriately feed him or frequently change his diapers. Accusations unfolded, accusing constant exposure of the child to uncivil, threatening, and potentially detrimental emotional or physical episodes. However, all such allegations were refuted.