Green TD wants new deal for parents

Merriman Summer School: The massive Government subsidies granted to the building and finance industries should be redirected towards funding the care of children.

This is the view of Green Party TD Eamon Ryan, who told the 38th Merriman Summer School in Lisdoonvarna, Co Clare, that proper social payments for parenting work should be introduced.

Addressing the school on Saturday, he said: "I believe it makes economic sense to redirect the massive Government subsidies currently granted to the building and finance industries into caring for our children. Property development does not create an enterprise culture. Investing in the nurturing of secure and confident young people who will be prepared to meet the challenges of an ever-changing world certainly will."

Deputy Ryan maintained that securing "parenting payments" would involve a difficult political battle: "However, it will be welcomed by a growing band of women and men who might want more time and flexibility rather than more money and work stress in the first years of their children's lives.

"The existing child benefit system heads in the right direction, but it is too small to really influence the fundamental childcare choices that parents are being forced to make. Any new support measures must grant parents the freedom to choose between funding a childcare facility, a childminder or indeed their own work at home.

"I believe we should also try to design such supports in a way which favours those on lowest incomes. Class differences, more than gender, still have a profound effect on the quality of women's daily lives. The choices for thousands of women who still wonder whether there will be enough money to put food on the table for their children are very different from those dealing with the stresses of being a partner in a corporate law firm.

"Introducing a new system of social payment is going to be very difficult given that even Berlin seems to be heading towards Boston when it comes to socio-economic policy. It is hard to argue for a change in an era which seems to be fearful of change itself. Perhaps we have a subconscious collective fear that the remarkable recent years might be taken away from us."

He added: "One of the cultural changes we need to effect is the expectation that, if one partner works full-time at home, the other will come home from work early or perhaps stay at home for one half-day a week so that one partner does not end up working a double shift every day.

"For everyone's sake we need to change a work culture that sets parents on a frantic climb up a career ladder which ends in ill-health and regrets in later life that they do not really know their children."