Working families need time for parents and children to be with each other, argues Sally Anne Kinahan
Investing in people - in their skills and their potential - is what the smart economies of the 21st century will be built upon. This is not a concept that conventional economic thinking - or what passes for same - can readily grasp.
But if this globalised economy has taught us anything over the last decade, it is that future competitive advantage cannot be built on such flimsy foundations as low taxes, poor public provision and inflexible employer practices.
This message has been well-learned in the Nordic countries. But here in Ireland we appear to inhabit a time zone specifically set aside for slow learners, if Budget 2008 is anything to go by. In that most recent demonstration of Government priorities, bricks and mortar triumphed over people, developers over much-needed development.
Investing in people is the key to raising productivity and, ultimately, enhancing our competitive capacity.
Central to this is the need to deliver greater flexibility and support for working families. That much should be self-evident. Yet, fine words notwithstanding, a quick appraisal of existing economic policy totems might lead you to conclude that people are the awkward things that get in the way of policy implementation and foul up the smooth running of business.
This country can be a cold, cold place for working families. In reality, we are at the wrong end of every relevant, comparative chart and graph across the EU15 and we sometimes fall behind the new accession states in terms of services and supports for working families.
While our public spending on families has more than doubled since 1980, we still spend less, as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), on this crucial sector of the population than 11 other European countries, including Hungary. Their public spending on families accounts for over 3.5 per cent of GDP, ours just 2.5 per cent, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
In terms of the mechanisms and services that facilitate workplace flexibility for families, we are among the worst in Europe. Leave schemes (maternity and paternity leave) are prominent examples. A 2005 EU study that combined and weighted existing EU schemes in terms of payment found Ireland in 14th place.
The situation is exacerbated by restrictive employment practices. In March 2006, the CSO estimated that some 80 per cent of our workforce had no discretion over what time they started and finished work.
And then there is the issue of childcare which, to date, has hardly been characterised by what might even be remotely described as joined-up thinking. In fact no thought other than the old canard that "the market will provide" appears to have been given to this crucial issue.
There are serious moral and child development issues at the heart of this matter but as yet, we have not even managed to frame the debate in what is its proper context. Yet, as the recent OECD report Babies and Bosses concludes: "... the available evidence seems to suggest that child development is negatively affected when an infant does not receive full-time personal care for the first 6-12 months of the child's life".
In our pre-Budget submission, Congress explicitly sought the introduction of a package that would have allowed parents to combine leave entitlements and provide that vital first 12 months of care themselves. Unfortunately, bricks and mortar carry more weight than babies these days.
Indeed our public spending on childcare falls well below the OECD average and ranks us 27th out of 28 countries surveyed. Only Korea manages to spend less. Thus, the burden is transferred to hard-pressed parents with almost 25 per cent (24.8) of average earnings now required to pay childcare costs - the OECD average is 16 per cent and in many EU countries it is comfortably below 10 per cent.
Left at the mercy of the market, we now have a childcare model of inconsistent quality so that, the OECD again concludes, "the costs of childcare can be so high that in the short term work does not pay for many second earners in couple families...." This is economic and social madness which harms our productive capacity and does untold damage to working families.
Our priorities are utterly skewed. We need to put people at the centre of all that we do, refocus our services so that they support and not hinder working families. If we continue to be held back by slow learners we will soon be eclipsed by the societies that invest in people and which are learning to work smarter. We need more time for working families.
Sally Anne Kinahan is assistant general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions