Sir, - I couldn't agree more with your Editorial of February 8th when you say that industry should not dictate the needs of childcare. It is high time that industry began to understand the true economic picture - i.e. that it could not possibly survive if it had to pay the full cost of all the unwaged work involved in the production, rearing and maintaining of its present and future employees, work very largely done by women. It is astonishing that the Government doesn't enlighten IBEC in this regard, because Ireland has already committed itself (together with all other countries in the world) to the measuring and valuing of unwaged work, a decision taken at the UN Women's Conference in Beijing, 1995. This commitment is part of Partnership 2000; the Central Statistics Office should be publishing its pilot time-study in mid-March, when everyone will be able to see the proof of what women have been saying for years. The State has an obligation to enable women in the home to be as fully functional in their work as the wage-workers. They have as much right as wage-workers to education, leisure, and aid in the thousands of unexpected domestic emergencies, accidents, sicknesses and so forth - and therefore as much right to all forms of childcare, well-subsidised, well-organised and reliable. Moreover, it would help children as much as parents if both could have time off from each other. Industry must not be allowed to set the waged woman worker (who still has to do her own unwaged work at home - double job for single pay!) against the unwaged home-worker. Is it going to take a general strike of the nation's women to force this message into the skulls of politicians and employers? - Yours etc., Margaretta D'Arcy,
St Bridget's Place Lower, Galway.