Who cares about childcare?

In Denmark, the government pays 80 per cent of the creche fees. In the Republic, parents struggle to pay fees of £400-500 a month for each child from after-tax income, more than anywhere else in the EU. It makes already mortgage-stretched, two-career couples "creche-poor", creating an unacknowledged economic strain not reflected in the cost-of-living index.

But those who have the problem of paying for a good creche are the lucky ones. The shortage of childcare places is so acute that the first call some mothers make, when the pregnancy test is positive, is to their local creche to place their unborn child on the waiting list.

Nanny agencies, such as Belgrave Agency in Dublin, have 10 families waiting for every two nannies seeking work. Childcare workers are in such short supply that they can name their price with salaries which, in some cases, are three times what they were a few years ago.

Forty-two per cent of mothers of younger children are in employment, a dramatic change due partly to the double-income mortgage-bind experienced by young families. Babies under two are more likely than children of any other age to have mothers who work outside the home. This is also because the Republic has by far the worst paid maternity/ parental leave in Europe. Those who are working are clamouring for childcare places, often leaving their children - against their better instincts - in unmonitored situations in the black economy because they can find nothing better. And the situation is only going to get worse: demand for childcare could increase by 50 per cent in the next 10 years, according to The National Childcare Strategy, a report of the Partnership 2000 Expert Working Group on childcare.

The Government knows all this - because all the information is contained in exhaustive detail in three excellent Government reports (see panel). The best minds have described and analysed the childcare crisis, making considered recommendations. Instead of doing something about it, the Government has set up yet another committee. Why are they getting away with it? Parents - whether struggling to combine a career with child-rearing or working full-time in the home - are the most exhausted, stressed-out and time-conscious people on the planet. They don't have time to complain, or to write to their TDs, or to march on the Dail which, at this stage, surely deserves a mountain of nappies on its doorstep, raising a stink as big as the farmer's lobby. There is plenty of justification for parents' anger, according to The National Childcare Strategy report (January 1999): "Compared to OECD and EU countries, the provision of childcare services in Ireland is limited . . . present service provision lacks co-ordination and varies widely in quality. No government has had a coherent approach to national childcare policy and governmental childcare initiatives over the years have been reactive rather than proactive. The Expert Working Group believes the lack of provision of quality childcare has reached a crisis level. Many services have long waiting lists and parents have difficulty accessing information on what is available."

With such damning evidence, how does the Government think it can get away with delaying action on this crisis yet again? It's certainly not logic which justifies the delay. The case for early childhood education is inarguable, as stated by the National Forum for Early Childhood Education; there is an undeniable and immediate shortage of childcare places, as the Commission on the Family stated; and an unregulated black economy continues to operate, affecting 50 per cent of children of working parents, as the Expert Working Group found.

The Government can deny reality because women are pitting themselves against other women. In the Government's handling of the childcare crisis, women working "outside the home" have been deliberately set in conflict with women working "in the home", enabling the Government to slip out of its responsibilities.

When the report of the Expert Working Group was launched, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, John O'Donoghue, complimented the Expert Working Group at the launch itself, then through the media expressed concern that women working full-time in the home would feel they were treated unfairly if "working" women were to get something they did not. The move confused the situation, took some of the steam out of it and changed the agenda from one about providing children with early childhood education and childcare, to one of the competing rights of women in the home versus women in the workplace.

Such a false division "suits the Government; it's so cynical," says Martina Murphy of the National Children's Nurseries Association.

"If we don't have a clear, articulated vision of what we want childcare to be, the politicians will play around in this area with an agenda to divide and conquer women in the home and women in the workforce," warns Jenny Bernard, vice-chairwoman of the rural subgroup of the Expert Working Group, and representative of the Council for the West. Childcare is an issue for all parents - not just those working outside the home. "Childcare services should be available for both parents who are in paid work and those who are not, as childcare has an educational, a social and a reconciling function," says a recent European Centre report, Reconciling Family and Working Life. The Government's divisive gameplan was first aired shortly before the Budget estimates last autumn, when the Government let loose the "flyer" that the Expert Working Group would be recommending tax allowances for childcare. There was an immediate - and predictable - cry from women working full-time in the home, understandably asking: "What about us?" The media debate continued for week, with a vocal lobby arguing that a mother's place is in the home, minding her children, and that she should be paid for it. By the time the Expert Working Group's report was published - after the estimates, when it could do less harm - the concept of State-supported childcare had falsely been placed in direct conflict with the rights of full-time parents in the home.

Meanwhile, the Expert Working Group report was officially published and recommended receipted childcare tax allowances of £4,000 for the first child and £3,200 for subsequent children. It rejected the Commission on the Family's previous recommendation that child and parent benefits be paid to all families irrespective of employment status - an option which tends to be favoured by women working full-time in the home.

But neither of these may be the answer. Assisting parents in paying for private childcare may simply increase quantity, while reducing the quality, Jenny Bernard believes. It may be better to put the resources directly into childcare services themselves, which would enable the State to set standards for quality of care. It has yet to do this: new regulations merely cover buildings, fire and staffing.

Be that as it may, many members of the Expert Working Group were astonished to see their report all but ignored by the Government. Instead of endorsing the working group, the Minister called its work "a good base for future action". As group members stood aghast, he then announced the setting up of an inter-departmental committee, which would "evaluate, cost and prioritise the childcare proposals in all three reports together with relevant proposals in the Government Programme Action Programme for the Millennium and make recommendations to Government within six months."

When she heard this, one member of the Expert Working Group, Martina Murphy of the NCNA, reacted strongly: "I had to leave the room, I was so depressed and disillusioned. I had the feeling I was one of the people who gave freely of my time and expertise and now that was being discounted.

"All departments were involved in the Expert Working Group, so why is there a need for an interdepartmental group?" she wonders.

"The working group saw itself as absorbing the other reports. People gave considerably and freely of their time for the social good under the impression that this was to be the definitive report. After the expenditure of so much time and energy, by so many experts in the field, we are now going back to handing the childcare issue over to the civil service. They have a totally different perspective and they were represented on the Expert Working Group. Now, rather than being represented, they are to have the final say," she says. "It's a great pity and a disappointment."

IN the west, communities are way ahead of Government policy, analysing their own needs and forming their own playgroups with the assistance of the health board. "In the absence of any clear vision of where we are going, communities have started to solve it on their own. We know what to do," says Jenny Bernard. "We need the co-ordination and resources to do it. This is too urgent to merely talk about any longer. There is a crisis."

Parental and community involvement is essential in the decision-making process developing childcare services, states Reconciling Family and Working Life. Yet parents and communities feel cut off from the current inter-departmental process of "examining the three reports". Childcare is something which is about to be doled out to us - when we should be involved in the process. They are our children, after all.

But we have long become accustomed to this disempowerment, partly due to the guilt complexes many working mothers still harbour. The artificial workingmother/mother-in-the-home dichotomy is also dangerous because it makes childcare appear to be an issue only for working parents. Those working on the ground in the childcare area are wondering whose interests the Government's civil servants will actually serve? The interests of children and their parents, or the needs of industry to get more women into the workplace as quickly as possible?

According to Jenny Bernard, the main criteria for judging the quality of childcare provision are: "Does it help parents to balance work and family and does it make children happy? Or, is it just making childcare cheaper and crummier?" She is worried that "there were few experts on the provision of childcare on the Expert Working Group. Most were experts in the need for childcare."

"Provision" has to do with enhancing life whereas "need" is economic. There is a suspicion that businesses which want to make the most of a booming economy want their parent-employees have somewhere to put their children conveniently out of the way so that they can work long hours. Perhaps this is why the only economic measure the Government has taken so far has been to offer tax incentives for businesses to set up workplace creches.

"IBEC began to drive the Expert Working Group," says Denise McCormilla, a workinggroup member who sat dismayed as she saw the needs of business dominating the agenda. "A lot of people on the group had no experience of childcare - had nothing at all to do with children," she says. "Policy was being driven by the need for business to get women into the workplace, rather than by the needs of the child."

The European ethos, in contrast, has been to help parents to work part-time or to take extended leaves-of-absence during their children's early years. Many Irish parents are amazed when they hear that in Austria, for instance, mothers get two years paid parental leave after the birth of a child. In Finland, France and Germany they get three years paid leave. Part-time work is also a guaranteed right: parents can work part-time for seven years in Finland, and for 12 years in Portugal.

The Report on the National Forum for Early Childhood Education to the Minister for Education and Science, Mral Martin (1998), calls for increased paid maternity and parental leave, part-time work for mothers and subsidised childcare facilities for all families. Similarly, Strengthening Families for Life: Final Report to the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs by the Commission on the Family (May 1998), recommends a PRSI-funded extended period of parental leave of up to three years (this would cost £255 million a year).

"Childcare services must always be regarded as a supplement to family care, varying in the amount of hours depending on parents' extent of employment," says Reconciling Family and Working Life.

Childcare, as the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, John O'Donoghue, has said, is "an equality issue". Without State-supported childcare, women cannot claim to be treated equally by society. But what is equality? It no longer means being equal to men. Today, it means having equal quality of life: women who do two jobs, one in the workplace and one at home, are not equal. And women who work tirelessly in the home without acknowledgement by the State are the least "equal" of all.

THE economy needs women taking up employment, but has the Government asked parents what we need? What many parents really want is to be enabled to stay home while their children are young; or to engage in part-time employment; or to balance family and work through flexible hours and working from home. "It is my firm intention to pioneer the development of adequate childcare in this country into the new millennium," said the Minister at the launch of the Expert Working Group's report. Parents, childcare providers and workers who have the best interests of children at heart may find his use of the word "adequate" rather depressing, when what we need is something visionary, child-centred, family-friendly and life-enhancing. What we need is something more much more than merely "adequate".