The National Women's Council has warned that suggested Government cutbacks of 8,000 Community Employment Scheme places would put the staffing of the few child-care facilities which currently exist at serious risk.
The NWC chairwoman, Ms Noreen Byrne, said at the publication of a research study on child-care facilities in different parts of Ireland on Saturday that child care in Ireland was in crisis. There is at present no Government commitment to a long-term child-care strategy, she said.
Introducing the study, Ms Mary Wallace, the Minister of State at the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, said Government action would have to wait for the report in December of the broad-based Expert Working Group on child care, established by the Government last year.
Ms Byrne said there was an urgent need for core Government funding to operate child-care facilities such as the four largely EU-funded projects which were the subject of the study, carried out for the NWC by the Centre for Women's Studies at Trinity College Dublin.
The four projects studied were: women's centres and creches in Ronanstown, Co Dublin, and Cork city; a mobile bus creche in west Limerick; and an Irish-speaking creche in the Connemara Gaeltacht in Co Galway.
Ms Byrne pointed to an "excessive dependence" on Community Employment Scheme workers in child-care facilities, due to lack of full-time staff. This staffing arrangement would be at serious risk if the Government went ahead with the cutbacks suggested in a report from the Tanaiste, Ms Harney.
The study made a number of recommendations which the NWC hope the Government will adopt as the basis of a national child-care framework. These include statutory core funding for affordable and accessible child care; State funding of community child-care facilities as an employment-providing opportunity; State-funded in-service training and a standardised accreditation system for child-care workers; a guaranteed percentage of EU structural funds to be set aside for child care; and Government incentives to employers to provide flexible working time for parents wanting to work outside the home.