Irish Examiner view: Affordable childcare as a right

Accessible and affordable childcare is a societal issue, and will become a point of contention in which the current Coalition will be judged upon.

When childcare costs become a barrier to having children, as reported in Monday’s Irish Examiner, it is past time for the State to step in and provide childcare. Just as we expect the State to provide hospitals, healthcare, and schools, we should be asking it to take action to meet this pressing societal need.

And accessible, affordable childcare is a societal issue, not a problem to be solved by hard-pressed parents juggling the demands of raising a family with the financial costs that come with it.

The scale of the challenge was highlighted in the latest Rural Ireland Thinks survey, which found that 63% of respondents see the cost of childcare as a barrier to having children. That should concern policymakers, particularly at a time when Ireland’s population is ageing rapidly.

Indeed, on the same day the survey findings were reported, Tánaiste and finance minister Simon Harris was warning that Ireland’s ageing population will place a huge burden on tax payers in the coming years. The contradiction is difficult to ignore — we cannot simultaneously worry about the economic consequences of an ageing population while failing to address a barrier to young people starting or adding to their families.

There are many reasons people decide to have children and the State has no business dictating those. But the cost of childcare as a factor in these decisions is something the State can address. Fifty years ago, the demand for childcare in this country was limited. Female labour force participation was just 27% in the early 1970s, with less than 10% of married women in the paid workforce. Female participation is now more than 60% (male participation is just over 70%). Two-income families are the norm — indeed few families can
manage on one income — but the infrastructure to support working parents has not kept pace.

While almost every other European country has long supported the provision of heavily subsidised childcare, Ireland has not. It is true that subsidised childcare programmes have been introduced in recent years for pre-school children, and that Government has pledged to reduce costs to a maximum of €200 a month during the lifetime of this Coalition. But those aspirations are of little comfort to families paying more than €200 per week per child for childcare.

Access to decent local primary and secondary schools is a right enjoyed in this country. It is time that affordable, accessible childcare be treated the same way, as part of the basic infrastructure of a modern society.

A balancing act for Government

The prospect of a winter of discontent has rarely seemed more real as budget day approaches. Leaks and briefings surrounding the budget so far appear to be concerned with relatively modest measures such as the new personal investment account, a small increase to the threshold at which workers start paying the higher 40% income tax rate, changes to inheritance tax, and the protection of home heating oil from carbon tax increases.

All may be welcome in their own right, but the worries facing people and the pressures building on the Government are considerably bigger.

The Irish National Teachers Organisation last Friday became the latest public sector trade union to announce industrial action in pursuit of a new public sector pay deal. Its members will begin a work to rule from October 5, with teachers in primary and special schools refusing to work beyond their contracted daily teaching hours.

A number of other unions have already announced similar work-to-rule protests, starting next week.

If, by the middle of October, the Government has still not moved on a new pay deal, unions have warned of a general, countrywide, one-day strike, with pickets at public sector workplaces on October 14.

Alongside that gathering storm is the spectre of renewed fuel protests as prices rise relentlessly towards the levels that sparked crippling protests in April, as well as the growing anxiety among hundreds of thousands of families about how they will meet their energy and other bills over the winter.

The Government faces a difficult balancing act. It cannot afford to fuel inflation or lock itself into unsustainable spending commitments, but neither can it ignore the very real pressures facing so many households.

The test on budget day will be whether the Government can offer more than a collection of limited concessions. It needs to show that it understands the scale of the pressures facing people and has a credible plan to ease them.

If it fails, the anger building across workplaces, communities, and households could make for a very long winter indeed.

Fresh Diana content decades later

Admirers of the late princess Diana will likely be happy that the seemingly endless supply of Diana material has been replenished.

Tuesday sees the publication of a memoir by her brother, Charles Spencer, offering a fresh examination of the woman whose life, death, and complicated relationship with the British royal family has sustained a healthy segment of the publishing industry for decades.

It is somewhat surprising that one of the people who best knew the late princess left it so long to write the book, 'Swan Song: Diana, My Sister'. Diana’s butler, private secretary, protection officer, and a former lover got their books into print years ago, as did many more who never once encountered the princess.

Mr Spencer said he felt a duty "as an eyewitness to history" to write his memoir, with a growing awareness of his own mortality prompting him to do so now. The timing may be coincidental. However, with the 30th anniversary of Diana’s death approaching, Charles Spencer will almost certainly benefit from getting in ahead of the plethora of books, documentaries, and analyses we can expect in the months ahead.

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