Minister Burton faces difficult choice over reform of child benefit

I GET €732 a month.

I have four children, including twins. For some reason, each twin gets one and a half times the usual child benefit every single month.

I have great use for it all. And it’s come down. Back in last days of the Celtic Tiger, in 2006, I got over €13,000 into my paw, tax-free, because three children qualified for the early childhood supplement.

This give-away has gone on since we became parents 13 years ago. During most of that time either mammy or daddy has had a fantastic job. Right now we don’t. I’m not saying the benefit doesn’t have its time and place. I’m just saying it can’t go on being given at the full rate to everyone, or there won’t be enough for those who really need it.

That’s what the IMF said last week, as if we didn’t know it already. Joan Burton has to wield the meat clever. She may end up taking the bit out of the mouth of poor kids because she can’t find a way to tax child benefit. And it’s all because of a grossly mistaken view of women’s rights. In 1999 Charlie McCreevy — in a characteristically clever move — started a regime of assessing the two partners in a marriage for tax individually.

His Nibs may be earning €300,000 a year, but that has no bearing on the welfare of Her Nibs, nor on the little Nibs. Why should it? Isn’t Her Nibs a person in her own right? Why, she is so busy living her own dream that she barely knows what His Nibs does for a living.

At least that was what McCreevy hoped for Her Nibs. He hoped she’d be encouraged by the fact that she had no tax liability as Mrs. Nibs to get busy making loads of lolly instead of staying at home with the little Nibs. In this he was, said an Irish Times editorial, “ahead of his time.”

The feminist establishment applauded so hard with the capitalist establishment that you could barely tell them apart. Some of the mammies — who might have been living on top of mountains with three dyslexic kids and an elderly aunt — ended up over €7,000 worse off a year because they worked inside, not outside the home.

But the growth agenda was an unstoppable juggernaut careering down the road until it crashed in 2008 and suddenly people realised that we needed to tax child benefit. We needed to target this benefit away from those who don’t need it to those who do or we can’t maintain the rates.

Mrs. Nibs said: “I don’t earn a penny!”

But Mr Nibs earns €300,000 a year!”

“But the child benefit is mine! So if you’re going to tax the benefit you’ll have to tax it as part of my income, which is nil!”

It seems clear that if you’re assessing tax liability with the welfare of children in mind you’ve got to assess mammy and daddy’s income added together.

But that’s not how we do things. And there would be howls from the feminist establishment if that changed. Which shows how far feminism has travelled from Hilda Tweedy’s Irish Housewives’ Association, a forerunner of the National Women’s Council (NWC), which fought for the welfare of families with slogans like “The children must be fed!”

Not only has the NWC always supported tax individualisation, it also defends the universality of the child benefit payment. When it’s arguable that the universal payment widens the gap between rich and poor children.

Mrs Have-not spends hers on beans and bangers. Mrs. Nibs has already given the little Nibs their tea, so she uses the extra cash for piano lessons and grinds and private schools and private doctors and private dentists. And she doesn’t see the need to fight to make these resources available to everyone.

The acting chief executive of the NWC said this week that maintaining the universality of the child benefit payment was important because it recognised the care work done by all women “regardless of class.”

So are women in a class of their own? To some extent, they are. The big issue for feminist campaigners has been what the NWC called “income inequality within households” This translates as Mean Husband Syndrome.

When the Second Commission on the Status of Women was reporting way back in 1993, the single item most requested in the 603 submissions was a direct payment to the woman in the home. A lot of these women could not get money from their husbands. Commission member Finola Kennedy spoke of letters from women who were married to well-paid men and didn’t have the price of a pair of tights.

The number of such marriages must have declined because women have become more empowered and nearly all come to marriage from paid work. Even in 1974, when child benefit began being paid directly to the woman of the house, 80% of men already paid it over to their wives.

But there will always be some Bluebeards out there. And universal child benefit is a way of compensating the wives and partners of Bluebeards.

It really doesn’t seem very wise to spend €2.73bn a year in an untargeted way because some husbands are mean. Especially as it’s not nearly enough if it’s all a woman is getting. Are you telling me €732 a month is a fitting payment for 24-hour responsibility for my four children? I won’t deny that it would keep me in tights. But — speaking frankly — I’m worth a hell of a lot more than that.

If one parent is not working outside the home she deserves half of the assets and income of the home. Anything less is wholly unfair. This suggestion, called “community of property”, was made many moons ago by that same Second Commission on the Status of Women. And quietly dropped.

The Commission’s progress reports commented briefly that such a regime would require Constitutional change. Though it would only be putting into effect in a living marriage the division of property which usually now occurs when a marriage is dead.

No-one has campaigned for “community of property” since, least of all the NWC. Their aim was to get women out of the home earning their own wages. But even if the jobs were there, this isn’t practical for very many families — 75% of 12-year-olds were cared for by a parent at home in 2010.

And it is incredibly stupid to force out to work people who want to stay home. There is only so much work. There are only so many natural resources to feed the work. Can we not find pathways to equality for women within their own homes? But no, we are ideologically opposed to such an idea. This is in keeping with international trends. The OECD’s Babies and Bosses report on families and employment in Ireland in 2003 contained the outrageous suggestion that women who did not work outside the home should be stripped of their child benefit because it made staying at home too attractive.

So take your meat cleaver, Joan, and make your choice between taxing child benefit on a single income, regardless of what the household income is, or making a flat-rate cut to the benefit of needy children.

You will have to blame someone. So after the IMF and Fianna Fáil, blame a feminist movement which forgot children.