Sir, - I would like to endorse Medb Ruane's passionate plea (Opinion, July 14th) that the Government should at last do something effective about childcare. But I would also like to add a reminder to the Government that it has yet to allot the money for a comprehensive measuring and valuing of women's unwaged work - to which it is committed in the PPF agreement. Medb Ruane says that as to childcare the Government is still stuck on potty training. But in regard to unwaged work it hasn't got out of nappies.
A new survey conducted by Ark Life, admittedly only among married women, reveals that the monetary value of their work in the home is as much as £356.40 a week, not counting inflation. Isn't it about time that the Government began to "live in the real world" - as it's always telling us to do - and face the fact that all women are workers and have always been workers?
We need our own financial returns for the work we do for the benefit of the State, as with any other of the service industries, with some kind of wage for parents (married or not), paid holidays, entitlement to adult education, entitlement to pensions and free medical care in our own right in our old age. If this was done it would put an end to all the meaningless faction-fighting and waste of energy between women who go out to work and women who work at home, and would give us some confidence that our politicians do care about the people who do the caring work. - Yours, etc.,
Margaretta D'Arcy, (member of Executive, National Women's Council of Ireland), St Bridget's Place Lower, Galway.