Promises idly made can be votes lost. This should be borne in mind by politicians of all parties as they gear up to woo voters with their new childcare policies for the next general election.
They ignore, at their peril, the latest figures from the Central Statistics Office, published in today's Irish Times, which throw new light on this increasingly sensitive issue. The demand for imaginative responses to the need for childcare has changed utterly in recent years.
For the first time, according to the CSO's quarterly national household survey for March-May 2005, the number of women in the labour force exceeds the number not in the labour force. A majority of women are now in the CSO classification of employed or available for employment: 51.4 per cent compared to 35.7 per cent a decade ago.
Heading into a general election, CSO statistics also show that the number of women at work is 776,800 compared to 539,400 who are involved in what the CSO classifies as "home duties".
There are many reasons why the changeover in the profile of the working family occurred. The cost of the family home is probably the primary cause but there are also hundreds, maybe thousands, of highly-qualified women who want to fulfil their own personal ambitions by pursuing a career outside the home. The question as to whether this is a good or a bad development for Irish society as a whole is another debate. But it is a reality.
Doubtless, the leaders of all political parties are conscious of these demographic changes. The story goes that TDs' eyes were opened during campaigning in the Meath by-election when they found that working parents placed their child in a creche at an unearthly hour of the morning, spent long hours commuting to work, only to collect the child some 12 hours later.
All of the political parties are promising a comprehensive childcare policy before the next general election. The Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrats Coalition has a working group, chaired by Minister of State, Brian Lenihan, preparing a report that will feed into next December's budget. Fine Gael expects to have a policy document within weeks. The Labour Party is promising, among other things, that childminders will be exempt from tax on the first €8,000 they earn.
Childcare policy, such as it exists today, is crude. It concentrates on capital grants for the providers of creches. It fails to address working parents. It does not take into account more informal arrangements, involving extended family, neighbours and friends, which form the backbone of the Irish childcare system.
Former Minister for Finance Charlie McCreevy was ahead of his time when he set out his individualisation policy to deal with changing demographic trends in 1999. All parties share his dilemma now: how do they reconcile the special position of women in the home with the latest statistics?