It's every working parent's nightmare. Your child, or childminder, is sick and you simply have to be in the office. Joyce Hickeyexplores possible ways out of the dilemma

YOU'RE AT THE OFFICE, in the middle of a fiddly spreadsheet or drafting a tricky letter. Your phone rings and your heart sinks. There on the screen is the dreaded word: "Creche". This usually means only one thing: "Your child is sick and you need to drop everything and get here now."

Normally, this family drama is played out without anyone knowing it. But on a recent edition of The Ray D'Arcy Showon Today FM, the usual breezy banter between the presenter, producers and researchers was enhanced by an outburst of gurgling and chuckling.

"This is Dara Fitzpatrick, who's making his broadcasting debut today," announced Ray.

It transpired that Dara, the 18-month-old son of the show's researcher, Mairead Farrell, was in the studio as his childminder had been taken ill and his backup minder (Farrell's father) was unavailable.

"Our minder phoned at 8.15am to say she was sick," says Farrell. "I was already in the office - I leave for work at 6.50am - and my husband said he couldn't mind Dara as he had a meeting at 10am." Then the couple had a discussion familiar to many parents: "Whose job is more important?"

Farrell was lucky in that D'Arcy suggested her husband bring Dara to the office - where the little boy had a fine time playing with the few available toys and charming his mother's colleagues until her friend collected him. "I was so stressed after that day," says Farrell.

Standard creche policy is to exclude children if they are ill. Cranford Creche and Montessori in Rathgar, Dublin 6, states it won't take children "if they have the following symptoms: diarrhoea, vomiting, a fever of 38 degrees (101 degrees Fahrenheit) or above" or "the following communicable diseases: chickenpox, measles, mumps, meningitis or hepatitis". Some creches refuse to take children with a cough and cold, and will even exclude them until they've been on an antibiotic for 48 hours.

When children start school, childcare can get more complex, with much juggling needed to pick them up after school hours and get them minded until work ends. Some parents keep their children at creche or playschool for an extra year, usually at immense cost, purely because they know things will be even more difficult once school starts. This resonates strongly with Anne-Marie, whose daughter has just started in junior infants.

"For all the advances women have made, we've really just bought ourselves four extra years. Women are having children later, so we're often in more senior positions by the time the children start school," she fumes.

This means that if they find it impossible to balance their career with the four-hour primary-school day, and end up leaving their paid employment, "the State is losing that experienced workforce".

As Anne-Marie works until 2.30pm she cannot collect her daughter. But she is lucky that her husband can do so.

"I see mothers spending their lunch break collecting their children and ferrying them to their grandparents, having no lunch, and charging back to work," she says.

ONE QUESTION OFTEN asked is why the State, whose law is that children must attend school, does not help out working parents and take some responsibility for the rest of the day. According to a new EU report on childcare, Irish families with two working parents and two children are spending 29.2 per cent of their net income on childcare, the second-highest in the EU, while the Government spends 0.2 per cent of GDP on childcare and early education, the lowest in the EU.

With primary schools making repeated calls for increased funding, how feasible would it be for them to use some of that money to provide after-school care? It would mean children of working parents could stay on in the same (hopefully) purpose-built school, with proper toilets, indoor and outdoor play space and properly trained carers, at a reasonable charge on a flexible basis - eliminating complicated arrangements with bus drivers, neighbours, grandparents, childminders and creches.

But this is not as simple as it sounds, says Peter Mullan of the Irish National Teachers' Organisation. It would be up to each school's board of management to decide.

"They would have to extend the school day and employ extra people, and ensure the building is 'fit for purpose', as most schools are not kitted out for 'wraparound care'," he says.

There would also be insurance and ventilation issues. "You can't keep children in the same room for the whole day," Mullan says, adding that "overcrowding is already a problem in many schools".

Some schools have started co-funded breakfast and homework clubs with proper ratios in suitable accommodation. Some have been set up for social reasons, to help children at risk or with difficult home lives to get through school. Meals and showers and the next day's lunch are provided as well as help with homework.

At St Paul's Junior School in Greenhills, Dublin 12, parents can avail of early-morning and after-school care during term-time, during school holidays, and on occasional days off on a full-time or part-time basis (something that's hard to negotiate with creches). The principal, Breda O'Connor, says the staff look after between 20 and 30 children, from junior infants to sixth class, in the school library, which is reconfigured after school into suitable accommodation. The parents arrange the days in advance and can pay as they go.

The childcare problem is only going to increase, according to another school principal. "There's a very middle-class assumption that one parent can simply stop work," she says. "With the downturn in the economy, many women who took career breaks and stayed at home because they could afford to, will find they have to go back to work to make ends meet." And all their children are going to need looking after.

Mairead Farrell's predicament was felt by many around the country, as evidenced by the Cork listener who texted the radio show the next morning to share his childminding woes.

"Mairead," he wrote, "I'll pay you a tenner an hour if you come down here and mind the baby." Let's hope he found a more practical solution.