Those of us with children, and in some cases grandchildren, know how much their happiness and welfare mean to us. We would be desperately upset if anything bad happened to them.
When we hear of the children of people we know getting into serious trouble, or being gravely ill or hurt, or even killed, we instantly empathise strongly with their parents, knowing just how we ourselves would feel in their place.
This is true of us individually, but is it true of us collectively? To what extent are we seriously committed as a community to tackling the abuse or neglect of children in our society, and what political priority do we give the issue?
I think that if we ask ourselves such questions as these, most of us would not be very happy with ourselves.
First of all, our child benefit system is much less generous than in most other EU countries. Even after the 35 per cent increase in the rates in 1995, our child benefit payments in relation to our disposable income per head still remained between 30 per cent and 55 per cent below the provision made in Finland, Austria, Belgium, Sweden, France or Luxembourg. In Belgium and France child benefit was topped up with tax reliefs.
In fairness, however, it has to be added that in this country the unemployed and low-paid workers receive relatively generous means-tested payment in respect of children. This complex structure, comprising child benefit, social welfare child dependant payments and family income supplement scheme child payments, has its own downside.
First of all, because family income supplements are not paid automatically to workers with low incomes but have to be applied for specifically, a remarkably high proportion of those eligible do not seek or receive such payments.
The second point is that even for those who do know about and are prepared to take advantage of the family income supplement scheme, the fact that payments under this scheme naturally decline as wages rise, leaving them little better off over a wide range of wage payments, represents a further disincentive.
Clearly it would be far better if this three-tier system, with its built-in disincentives, were to be replaced by an adequate child benefit scheme not subject to means-testing but, perhaps, subject to income tax.
One other negative feature of the Irish system of State provision for children is the failure in all but a minority of cases to reimburse school costs. The study from which I have drawn the comparative figures above* also shows that Ireland is unique in the heavy extent to which school costs, the cost of books etc, impose an additional burden on parents of school-going children.
These issues were considered in Dublin this week in the first of several Millennium Lectures organised by an English organisation caring for homeless children, the Lillie Road Group of Homes. The opening address was given by Cardinal Basil Hume who, among other matters, spoke of the devastating impact on children of an irretrievable breakdown of their parents' marriage, and also of the frightening revelation of recent times concerning the prevalence of child abuse.
Another speaker, Robbie Gilligan, senior lecturer in social work at Trinity College, was explicit about the inadequacy of our arrangements for homeless children and children in need of care.
Nowhere else in the European Community, he said, was the provision for such children so inadequate as to require them sometimes to be housed in hospitals as well as in bed-and-breakfasts.
LIKE so many other social problems, this one has suffered from a lack of strategic direction. Belated piecemeal attempts have been made to tackle it, whereas what we have really needed has been an overall assessment of its scale, a plan to resolve it over a specified period and a commitment to provide the necessary funds over that period.
There is, however, a much wider and more long-term issue relating to children: that of how to offset the effects of poverty, deprivation, neglect and abuse, and of the impact of peer pressure upon young people living in disadvantaged areas.
One way of tackling this would be to improve radically the pupil-teacher ratio in primary schools in disadvantaged areas. Unhappily, during the past 12 years we have missed an opportunity of doing that without extra cost. Let me explain how this happened.
In areas of Ireland that are not disadvantaged, the high motivation of pupils and their parents largely offsets, may indeed more than offset, the effects of large class sizes.
In such non-disadvantaged areas smaller classes are desirable, but the benefits accruing from a relatively small reduction are likely to be marginal. By contrast, a radical reduction in class sizes in disadvantaged areas can have profound effects.
Since 1986 the number of children aged four to 11 has fallen by 19 per cent. If the national pupil-teacher ratio had been maintained at its 1986 level, this would have released 4,300 primary teachers. To our credit, and in marked contrast to what has happened in Britain, our primary teacher numbers have been maintained, but where have these additional resources per pupil been deployed?
Something close to 1,000 teachers seem to have been used in various ways to supplement resources in the 318 schools identified as disadvantaged or in special schools, but over three-quarters of the teaching resources effectively released by the drop in primary school numbers have been deployed to reduce the pupil-teacher ratio in the 90 per cent of schools which are not disadvantaged. Why did this happen?
Mainly because our political-administrative system has in the past been weak at advance planning and failed until the 1990s to grasp the demographic significance of the dramatic slide in the birth rate after 1980, but because it is also bad at targeting resources on specific problems.
This is a tragedy because the demographic decline in primary school student numbers would have begun to taper off within the next five years. Because of this new factor, this tapering-off process is already starting, and it is possible that numbers will stabilise within about five years.
We have thus failed abysmally to secure a social dividend from the once-off huge demographic shift of the past 18 years and now face the much more difficult task of tackling the crucial educational aspect of social disadvantage by some combination of a modest reversal of the improvement in the pupil-teacher ratio in non-disadvantaged areas and a costly increase in primary teacher numbers.
If we have not the courage to face this reality, I would judge that we will be unable within any measurable period to improve significantly the pupil-teacher ratio in disadvantaged areas.
*Sharing The Cost Of A Child, paper by Jonathan Bradshaw, professor of social policy, University of York