Stay-at-home parents criticise childminder tax plan
STAY-AT-HOME parents have criticised a proposed tax credit for parents employing childminders in their own home – saying they are being forced back into the workplace.
A new suggestion by two Fine Gael TDs would see parents receiving a tax credit for directly employing childminders in their own home – but the work of stay-at-home parents has yet to be addressed by the Government, it is claimed.
Under the plan, parents, working along the same lines as a business, would draw up a contract with the employee – the childminder – and pay their wages. However, this would be recognised in tax credits for parents at the end of the year.
The suggestion has been made by TDs Maria Bailey and Kate O’Connell, who say the plan is about ‘creating flexible, acceptable and affordable childcare to benefit the entire family’. However, Catherine Walsh, of the Stay-At-Home Parents Association Ireland, said: ‘There is still nothing happening in this regard for stay-at-home parents and it is, I suppose, that little bit more difficult to address.
‘I feel the Government don’t really want to help stay-at-home mothers like myself, they want us to be in the workplace and they want labour market activation.’
Ms Walsh said she would like to see home carers get their tax credit hiked significantly, adding that the recent increases were ‘tokenistic’.
She said the home carer grant leaves out those who aren’t married, adding: ‘Leo Varadkar prides himself on his liberal views, but it is archaic to say that you have to be married to avail of it. And single parents are totally left out.’
Meanwhile, Childminding Ireland, which represents thousands of childminders across the country, called for everyone providing quality childcare to be included in any support from the State.
It said minders who work in the house of the family are nannies, and that these individuals are protected by domestic workers legislation. However, it said childminders often operate out of their own home, and mind a number of different children from different families.
The group is calling for these workers to be included in the State’s universal childcare scheme.
A spokesman for Childminding Ireland said that while it welcomed the focus on home-based childcare, it was calling for ‘all childminders providing quality childcare to be included in any State supports’.
‘We would like to clarify that childminders are self-employed childcare providers working in their own home, often for several different families,’ the spokesman said. ‘The proposal as quoted refers to “childminders” as those working in the child’s home, whereby the parents are the employers.’