Don't forget to mind the children

At a conference to mark the 20th anniversary of the Employment Equality Agency last month, Mr Peter Cassells, general secretary of the ICTU, said the Government and employers should negotiate a "framework agreement" for "the provision of child care facilities, more flexible working rosters and other initiatives to help working rosters and other initiatives to help working parents".Mr John Dunne of IBEC replied that the primary responsibility for providing child care facilities must lie with the Government. It's unusual (but not unprecedented) for IBEC to call for more State involvement. It seems it would prefer, if anyone is to be required to provide child care facilities, that it should be the State rather than employers.We shouldn't perhaps expect IBEC or the ICTU t have a view on the wider issue of what is best for children. Employers will take a position on how to sustain a valuable, trained workforce; unions will want to deliver flexible arrangements and other benefits for their members. But these are not the sum of the issue.Although the Employment Equality Agency is sophisticated enough not to fall into the trap, many discussions of child care primarily treat the issue as an equality or an economic one and are bound to be inadequate and, most likely, not child-centred. The bare question as to who provides and pays will always miss the point about children. Child care is obviously about the care of children, at all ages, a very complex issue.The wider scope was illustrated in the notice last week invited submissions to the Expert Working Group on Child Care at the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. The issues to be considered include financial and employment implications (taxation, too, I hope) of an integrated approach to childcare; registration and qualification of childcare workers; childcare in rural and disadvantaged areas; the needs and rights of children. Here is an excellent opportunity. Write to the Expert Working Group at 43 Mespil Road, Dublin 4, before January 30th, 1998.It will be interesting to see if the Expert Group takes up Mr Cassell's call for a framework "agreement" covering workplace child care facilities. Up to now, there have been very few such facilities in the private sector. Some examples are the Bank of Ireland and, I understand, Elan Corporation in Athlone. Public sector organisations, such as Dublin Corporation, South Dublin County Council, the ESB and the Civil Service, have taken up the call.The Houses of the Oireachtas were to have one, but it was delayed.The provision of a creche is under discussion with the huge, young work force at Intel. First, a 7,000 sq. ft. gym was built at the request of workers; now a creche is on the agenda.The Intel case is interesting: the gym and the creche (if it comes about) arise from surveying, and/or requests from, the non-unionised work force, the result of local agreement. This is not to say unions are redundant; just that good things can happen outside national partnership agreements.I can't see how workplace creches could ever be anything other than the result of local, non-confrontational discussions between employers and workers. Child care is fraught enough with personal concerns, without those concerns getting caught up in coercive discussions with employers. Similarly, the best arrangements for flexible work practices are negotiated locally, not in a national agreement framework.Even if any framework agreement saw the light of day, it is hard to see how any compulsion could survive the type of ruling given by the Supreme Court in the Equal Status Bill. The court held that the provision of facilities for disabled people was a social goal primarily for the State, rather than the employers, to deliver.The expert group's examination could illustrate best practices for flexible work arrangements. It could recommend tax deductibility of wages to permit childminders to be paid properly. It could query the universal children's allowance.It could show how workplace creches are best implemented, rather than debate who should pay for them. It could distill best thinking about forms of child care and children's mental and psychological health. Most of all, it should escape the narrow terms of economic arguments about child care.