Dáil’s old grey men are ignoring childcare woes, but they’re doing so at their peril
EVERY general election turns up a rogue variable which the political elites do not expect. These are the most feared aspects of any election because their unexpected status means that there can be no plan to deal with them.
The classic example of this was the ‘it’s the economy, stupid’ ambush conducted by Bill Clinton on the first George Bush. Republicans in America normally win the economic war when it comes to presidential campaigns. However, the dangerous distraction of foreign policy and the apparently successful invasion of Iraq meant the American president was diverted sufficiently for the most cunning of US politicians, Bill Clinton, to smuggle the economic ball in under his jumper.
When it comes to our forthcoming hustings, it is becoming increasingly clear that early childcare is evolving into the rogue variable of the election.
In theory, one might not expect the Government to be caught unawares by the importance of this issue. They may only be small children but even our grey old men are vaguely aware that really children matter, in the quest for those all-important and always-courted votes.
The Taoiseach, after all, created the first full Ministry for Children, while the Coalition also managed to scrape a referendum victory on enshrining new rights for children into the Constitution.
The problem, however, is that all the new rights for children have remained safely within the realm of constitutional theory. It is hard not to feel, almost two years after the happy event that, once the focus group driven box had been ticked, any real sense of drive and commitment swiftly ended.
There certainly has not, in practice, been any change beyond the usual approach of uttering kindly sentiments as opposed to taking practical actions. That, at least, has been the experience of those who matter most; namely mums, dads and children themselves.
THEIR experience has been that, as with so many other issues, the Government has been more attached to the rights of children in theory rather than in practice. The Taoiseach and the then children’s minister Frances Fitzgerald may have started out with the best of intentions but, the stark truth is that the Department of Children has evolved into a political afterthought run by a political afterthought, whose budget would not even cover the HSE overdraft.
This gathering failure means increasingly though that those who know about the reality of childcare, namely parents, have had enough when it comes to the State’s non-policy on these issues.
One of the starkest judgments on the Coalition’s Childcare non-policy was delivered recently by the MummyPages’ Report on Childcare and Early Education in Ireland.
Politics in Ireland will, in the next few months, be dominated by many polls and surveys about political and party leader popularity. However, the survey by MummyPages, of more than 2,000 of its members, is one that merits far closer attention than the political soap operas that will dance across the front pages of many of our national newspapers.
In responding to a call from Government for feedback on the current status of Early Years and School-Age Care and Education, Irish parents sent an essential message to the Coalition. These include fresh thinking on
The survey revealed that four fifths matters such as the need f or of parents believe Ireland is experithe Government to provide a encing a childcare and early educasubsidy to all schools that are tion crisis and that 94 per cent of running after-primary- school care mothers say that private childcare is programmes to make childcare more too expensive. affordable for working parents
When it comes to these issues Irish The survey also revealed that mothers are not short of solutions. mothers were very clear about the cost and the consequences of Ireland’s ramshackle early childcare service. More than three quarters of stay - at - home and part- time employed parents would consider returning to the workplace full-time if childcare was more affordable.
The reality though is that for those who do work, 84 per cent of working parents struggle to cover the cost of their childcare costs
When it comes to childcare, parents also struggle with inflexible rules that belong to a previous century. This struggle goes far beyond the disincentives to work and to build a career that comes with such rules. Mothers feel that having children is incompatible with continuing to be active in the workplace and that the State should intervene to resolve these issues.
It is an astonishing failure of governance that Ireland’s early childcare system stifles so much latent talent and potential, given that what mums and dads want is so simple.
Parents also want flexibility, choice and options in terms of remaining in work and of balancing what is for many the strange, frightening but utterly inspiring task of raising their children.
They want real political investment in terms of creating early childcare places and in properly ensuring that these places are regulated to create a safe place for children. The ongoing absence of the latter is one of the most astonishing failures of governance.
When it comes to the small shop or restaurant, and indeed, to our overall lives, this is one of the most regulated countries in the world. Those who work in our SMEs know well if a VAT bill is unpaid for a while, that warnings of hell-fire and damnation rain down upon their heads.
Yet when we come to the State prioritising the protection of children, despite all of the fine words and noble sentiments that have followed a series of current and historical furores, the dominant attitude appears to be one of laissez-faire, laissez-passer.
The critical MummyPages survey is the latest example of how so many people believe Ireland is falling seriously behind when it comes to childcare. Our expenditure on childcare is half that of European countries to such an extent that we are now seriously short- changing our children at the most important time in their development.
SADLY, a Government and mandarin class of grey old men, most of whom would view the changing of a nappy as being something akin to the Third Secret of Fatima, are fatally trapped in a Victorian view of child development.
They apparently still believe that the education and formation of the child begins at primary school when in fact the real development of our children starts so much earlier. Irish children and the potential of Irish children are being lost by a childcare system that is falling behind the rest of the world.
Today’s neglect of early childcare is having far broader consequences still. It is condemning a generation of young parents to lives of sustained debt as they try to pay the childcare ‘second mortgage’.
The tensions this brings are not just financial.
How can parenting or families thrive if their lives are spent raising the money to pay bills they can ill afford to raise children they can only see on a part-time or even at a weekend basis?
In the 1960s children were failed in a similar fashion by an elite that decided the future fate of most working class kids would be one of emigrating to become unlettered navvies in London.
Quite the furore occurred when this comfort ab l e view was confronted by Donogh O’Malley’s revolution in primary education.
Ireland, today, needs a similar revolution in how we mentor, educate and look after children. A key test of civilisation lies in the capacity of society to ensure we raise nurtured happy children.
The question is will they get it off the current grey old men. I think alas we already know the answer to that. The voters certainly do.