Campaign urges Government to establish childcare framework

Nine hundred children "go missing" between primary and secondary schools in Ireland every year, a speaker at the launch of a childcare campaign in Dublin said yesterday.

Ms Margaret McCluskey, of the Association of Home Economics Teachers, argued that child benefit should be linked to school attendance, as in Sweden, to ensure children availed of their constitutional right. She also felt meals should be provided in schools.

Ms Martina Murphy, of the National Childcare Nursing Association, said there was a major crisis in the supply of childcare workers, with parents being forced into the unregulated area. It was estimated that the current situation would not ease before 2001, she said.

Both were speaking at the launch of the Childcare 2000 Campaign by a coalition of groups associated with the area.

The campaign calls on the Government to establish a national childcare framework, for which it recommends £3 million be allocated in the Budget for 2000; a total reform of the child benefit system with substantially higher payments of up to £30 per week per child (£20 per week for children aged from 6-14), the increased portion to be taxed at marginal rate for equity; the investment of £5 million in the 2000 Budget to support the supply of quality childcare in disadvantaged areas.

To address the unprecedented shortage of childcare places, the campaign recommends an investment of £2 million in capital grants for the upgrading of premises.

Ms Noreen Byrne, chairwoman of the National Women's Council of Ireland, described the launch as the beginning of a new phase in the childcare debate. "Collectively, the organisations which have built this campaign are determined to ensure that Budget 2000 provides substantial expenditure for childcare," she said.

The organisations include the NWCI, the NCNA, the Irish PreSchool Playgroups Association (IPPA), the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed (INOU), the National Child minding Association of Ireland, (NCAI), and An Comchoiste Reamhscolaiochta.

"Last December the total failure of the Minister for Finance to make any provision for childcare in the Budget resulted in national outrage. Since that time the situation has worsened, with almost daily newspaper reports about the childcare crisis . . . The Government must stop playing pass the parcel with this issue," said Ms Byrne, adding that the resolution of the problem lay firmly with the Government and political parties.

In putting forward the package yesterday the organisations "had to bite some hard bullets", she said, but such was the degree of crisis they were prepared to do so. To further this the framework they had adopted was the policies of four of the five political parties on the issue "so we could get some movement very fast", she said.

Ms Hilary Kenny of the IPPA said the campaign had activities planned up to Budget day, including briefings for candidates in the European and local elections next Monday.

"We will not sit by and watch Ireland, with its booming economy, continue to be the shame of the EU on childcare," she said.