Bravo, the Irish Mammy: How saving child benefit can pay for third-level education

As I write this, my family is awaiting my oldest son's CAO offer and already counting down the days until he starts university. And a scene from My Left Foot, the famous film about disabled Dublin writer Christy Brown, replays in my mind 25 years after I saw it.

Young Christy’s large family have fallen on even harder times than usual, and survive by eating porridge for breakfast, dinner and tea. A tin falls down from the fireplace. Inside are the mam’s savings: 28 pounds, eight shillings and three pence.

The dad demands to know why, with so much money in the house, the family is freezing and eating nothing but porridge. The mam responds that she’s saving toward a specific goal: to buy Christy, who has cerebral palsy, a wheelchair.

Bravo, the Irish Mammy!

This scene captures the essence of being a good parent. Christy’s mam wants him to not only survive, but to thrive, and for that he needs a wheelchair. She’s making sacrifices today (and demanding them of her family), so that Christy’s life can open up tomorrow. Given the Browns live in such dire poverty, her perseverance is particularly heroic.

Christy Brown was born during the Great Depression. If Christy’s mam were alive today, during our Great Recession, self-appointed scolds would be squawking that the family never needed the money in the first place; the proof being that she managed to save it. If she needed it, she would have spent it.

Creaky logic, I know, but this is the argument used to bash today’s mothers if they dare to save their child benefit.

Defied scolds

I’m glad I defied the scolds and funnelled my child benefit into a special five-year savings account managed by the National Treasury Management Agency. I got the cheque the other day.

And just in time. Right now we’re staring at the oncoming train of university expenses for our oldest child. We need to get our hands on the registration fee of €2,750; pay €55 a week for public transport; and buy whatever books and supplies are required.

We’re caught in the usual middle-class squeeze: our family income is slightly too low to pay all our monthly bills, but slightly too high for my son to get a student grant.

I’m a stay-at-home mum, so any new expense is a disaster for our one-income household. Our favourite budgeting technique is to push some bills from this month into next, which of course will leave us short next month, but if we can find a bill to put off till the following month . . .

If I hadn't had the foresight, prudence and self-control to save my child benefit, our son would have to go into debt or skip a third-level education. This is the only way we can help.

Over the years, some Very Important Men have taken pops at child benefit. Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary once sneered that it was a subsidy for having sex; economist Jim Power has said it’s unfair that most families who get child benefit are middle-income. Even Seán FitzPatrick – yes, Anglo-Irish Bank Seán FitzPatrick – slammed it as a sacred cow that should be tackled by politicians with courage. (Oh, the irony.)

Rubbish

Columnist Noel Whelan also wrote in

The Irish Times

a few years ago that families who can save child benefit are “likely to be able to afford college”. If we don’t use the money to “do a big shop [or] fund a monthly family treat”, we don’t need it.

Rubbish.

Child benefit is supposed to be for, um, the benefit of the child, right? Call me weird, but I think an education will be of greater benefit than a monthly family treat. The fact we saved isn’t proof that we didn’t count the pennies in the supermarket. All it proves is that we were prepared to struggle today, so we could handle a large, predictable future expense.

Funny, but I’d have expected business gurus, economists and barristers to grasp the theory.

The ability to resist an immediate reward in favour of a larger, later reward is called delayed gratification. Psychologists say it’s linked to academic achievement and good health, and it’s something all parents need to teach their children. Without it, who would ever achieve anything?

My hope is that, after all those months of our family doing without the big shop or the family treat, the end result will be good not only for my child but for our society: a well-educated citizen.

And let’s not forget that, by parking this money with State savings, I took the money that Ireland gave my child and loaned it back for five years at a low rate of interest – a small gesture of confidence and patriotism at a time when no one would lend to our country.

If that’s not a virtuous circle, I don’t know what is.

Mary Feely is a freelance writer, marytfeely@ eircom. net