Year’s parental leave ‘best for kids’

Parental leave for the first year of a child’s life is crucial to address the practice of “six-month-old babies being dropped in their PJs to the creche at 6.45 every morning, where they are going to remain all day”, say children’s rights advocates.

Addressing an Oireachtas children’s committee on the issue of affordable and quality childcare, Teresa Heeney, CEO of Early Childhood Ireland, said that if the scenario of day-long creche care for babies was “not what we want for our children” then “we need to be investing in one year of parental leave”.

Ciairín de Buis, director of Start Strong, an organisation which advocates for high-quality care as a right for children, said research showed that “for at least the first year of life, children do best when they are cared for at home by their parents”.