There has been much criticism of the Government's failure to announce provision for child care in last week's Budget. In the course of pre-Budget speculation - which in recent years has become increasingly intense owing to the scale of leaks about the Government's intentions - some expectations had been aroused about possible action on this matter. The Government has explained the absence of any such provision by reference to the fact that they have not yet received the Report of the Expert Working Group on Childcare. This explanation has been badly received by interest groups such as the Child-minders' Association and the National Women's Council.
They had come to expect some action on this matter following the expert group's briefing of the Government and its reported recommendation that £5 million be provided in this Budget to finance the initial steps in a proposed seven-year programme for a national child-care programme.
Tactically the Government was unwise to reject the £5 million proposal, which would have taken some of the heat out of this issue. But they would, I believe, have been equally unwise to have taken decisions on the substance of this issue before the report had been published and fully debated.
For this is an extremely complex issue. It involves a number of competing interests, economic and social, which have yet to be fully and satisfactorily reconciled, even in countries with extensive provision in this area.
First of all - although not necessarily first in priority - at a time when we are facing labour shortages in some regions and certain sectors, there is an economic need to facilitate an even stronger flow of women than hitherto into the labour force.
Second, and closely linked to this, is a social need to assist particularly the entry or return to the work-force of badly-off women, who need to earn but who cannot afford to work unless child-care facilities are provided by the State. Third, many of the 425,000 women who have personal or family incomes above the level that brings them within the tax net seek tax reliefs to help finance their own child-care arrangements. However, a fourth point to be considered is that the great bulk of the 575,000-600,000 women who work in the home have no current interest in seeking employment, and many of these would deeply resent new tax reliefs being extended only to those who they see as being better off by virtue of being engaged in paid work.
All these issues are addressed in a book published this week: Women, Work and the Family in Europe. Edited by Evelyn Mahon and Eileen Drew, of TCD, and Ruth Emerik of Aalborg University in Denmark, it brings together a score of contributions from authorities in a range of EU countries which deal with the issues of family structures and policies, the restructuring of labour markets in the interest of families, and the problem of reconciling family and working life. The material it contains is crucial to the strategy on these issues which the Government will have to devise during the next 12 months.
But in addition to the issues mentioned above and addressed in this volume, the State has yet another more long-term interest to consider, viz the well-being of children.
For there is clear evidence that during the first couple of years children benefit from the continued presence of their mother, and a greater presence and involvement of the father in the home is also beneficial.
It is clear from the material published here that the State can - and in some countries does - assist child-oriented objectives. It does so by means of arrangements designed to reduce financial pressures which may force mothers of young children to engage in paid work at a period when they would prefer to care for their children themselves, and to facilitate their return to work after this period. And the State can also introduce measures to encourage fathers to become more involved in caring.
Now, in Ireland we are starting from scratch in relation to child care, and are doing so at a time when an exceptional volume of additional resources are about to become available to us over the next decade. We thus have a unique opportunity to develop a child-care structure more comprehensive and more finely honed than any of those that have grown up, often in an unplanned way, in other European countries.
It is not too much to say that the future of our society depends upon wise long-term decisions on this matter being taken now, covering all five aspect of the problem outlined above.
On the basis of the contributions in this book, it appears to me that an optimal model for us might be a version of the French one, perhaps with some additional features of the Swedish system. For in France in 1994, 30 per cent of children under three were cared for in public facilities during the day - in public and private State-aided creches, in ecoles maternelles (publicly-funded preprimary schools), or in haltegarderies which welcome children for a few hours every day. And in the case of public child-care facilities the fees payable are calculated according to the parents' income.
In addition the French have two non-means-tested schemes which reduce the cost of child care for dual-earner or single-parent families who employ child-minders at home.
BUT while thus ensuring in a comprehensive way that women with small children who wish to work are facilitated in doing so, the French are also concerned that, in the long-term interest of the children, women who prefer to look after their young children at home be helped, and indeed encouraged, to do so.
Consequently, since the mid-1980s a non-taxed and non-means-tested allowance, currently well over £300 per month, is paid for up to three years to a parent who ceases work to look after a child or children under three.
Half-a-million parents are now in receipt of this allowance, which has had the effect of reducing from 69 per cent to 55 per cent the proportion of women with children under three who continue to work. The success of this scheme has been greatly helped by the fact that since 1994 all companies regardless of size must provide this parental leave when it is sought, and that parents taking advantage of this scheme are entitled to reinstatement in the position they previously held or a similar one, and are also entitled to retraining with pay.
Finally, in Sweden fathers are entitled to four weeks' parental leave which they cannot transfer to the mother, a provision of which a majority of them take advantage. And research has shown that this has had a significant effect on the quality and scale of male parenting.
What our Government needs to do during the next 12 months is to draw up a comprehensive scheme for child care including all those elements; a scheme that we could reasonably hope to be able to afford in seven years' time, which is the period of implementation that seems to be envisaged.
If such a comprehensive scheme were to be launched in conjunction with some version of the tax-credit scheme benefiting women working at home that I attempted to introduce in 1982, then however modest the initial payments, these arrangements would I believe be well received all round. A clear indication of how the scheme would develop in subsequent years would still criticism of the small scale of initial payments and reliefs.
What we do not need is an incomplete and unbalanced scheme which, by serving some of these objectives but not others, could distort the pattern of child care and the expansion of female employment in the early part of the next decade. The fact is that starting with a clean sheet as a result of past neglect, we have the chance to make a real success of this part of our future social policy.