As the summer holidays enter their final exhausting week, many parents will be counting the cost - in grey hairs as well as emaciated wallets - of having their children at home with them for three months.
New-age parenting manuals talk about the bonding process which should take place during the languid days of summer between parent and child, when the pressures of school and the workplace are put aside and harmony fills the air at home.
While it can be hard to bond with your child when he asks you for the 13th time "Are we there yet?" from the back of a hot car which he has smeared with melted chocolate, one must keep smiling through it all.
Early harmony is punctured very soon into the holiday season by loud sighs of boredom from children who have drained all the enjoyment they can from tennis racquets, footballs, computer games, bicycles, Pokemon (now, mercifully, on the way out) and the television.
The Republic has some of the longest school summer holidays in Europe. According to the latest figures from the OECD, the Irish school year runs for 33 weeks per year, leaving parents to fill the remainder. Only Spanish ninos revel in such liberty.
In Belgium, children are off for 12 weeks during the year and about nine weeks during the summer. In Australia schoolchildren on average are given 13 weeks off during the year, while in Greece they have 17 weeks and in Sweden 18.
Frazzled parents aside, nobody seems too perturbed by the situation. Top of the list are the State's teachers who enjoy the long holidays.
The OECD's publication, Education At A Glance, raises a more alarming view. "Some research has shown that students can forget a significant amount of material over long school holidays," it says. While it does not endorse such a view, it raises the spectre that elongated holidays could damage pupil performance.
Many teachers will testify to this pattern, too. According to one teacher last week: "When students come back after the summer you almost have to start all over again, because the long summer months have wiped them clean."
However, others say the long holidays are one of the strengths of the Irish system. "The summer holidays give children an important chance for some real personal development," says Mr John McGabhann, president of the Teachers' Union of Ireland.
"The teacher and the children need the break," says Mr John Whyte, president of the National Parents Council (post-primary). He adds that children develop outside and inside the classroom. "Despite the image, not every child during the summer is hanging around doing nothing. Thousands of pupils are involved in GAA summer camps, helping to improve things in their town or village, or picking up a new hobby."
Ms Fionnuala Kilfeather, head of the parents' council at primary level, is more scathing of the State's support for parents during the summer.
"We have not developed youth and leisure services that can be used by young people during the summer months. We are not child-friendly in what we provide. There are more golf courses in this country than there are playgrounds, which says a lot about our priorities," she says.
Mr George O'Callaghan, who represents boards of management at many schools, explains. "In comparison to schools abroad, we tend to have longer days and teach more subjects more intensively and consequently have longer holidays". OECD statistics bear this out.
For example, on average Irish children receive 27 hours of teaching a week, which is in the top half of the league table among developed states. So while countries such as Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Belgium give their children shorter holidays, Irish children earn their days in the sun with a more intensive school week.
"Our exams are very tough by international standards, and pupils need time to recover from them," Mr Whyte adds.
