THE TAOISEACH Brian Cowen will be faced with a deluge of nappies on May 18th from a group of parents protesting against plans to means test or tax children’s allowance from the beginning of next year.
The group, called Protest Against Child Unfriendly Budget (PACUB), consists of over 500 parents who feel families were disproportionately targeted by the recent Budget and who face a similarly disproportionate budget at the end of the year.
As well as sending nappies to the Taoiseach to highlight their concerns, the group is urging parents to sign an online petition on the social networking site Facebook and to download and send a protest letter from their web site www.childbenefit.info to the relevant Ministers and their local TDs.
The group is calling for Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan to reverse his decision to remove the early childcare supplement and plans to target children’s allowance prior to the local and European elections on June 5th.
The scrapping of the early childcare supplement means that parents of children under five will lose an annual net amount of € 984 per child from January 1st next year.
Children’s allowance is currently worth € 166 per child, per month or € 1,992 per annum for each child.
In order for an average middle-income family to compensate for the combined shortfall of losing the early childcare supplement and children’s allowance being means-tested or taxed they will need to earn an additional income of € 5,000 per child, per annum, according to PACUB. They say this figure relates to the additional income needed, before taxes and levies are deducted from salaries.
For many parents, the group says, these additional cutbacks as well as the increased taxes and levies combined with the rising cost of childcare make returning to work impossible.
More information on the campaign is available at www.childbenefit.info