The State has been convulsed by a divisive debate on individualisation, which was an equitable measure - although it should have been accompanied by individualisation of social welfare payments to help the families who need it most. In the ensuing media war, we have heard discussions of women's rights and equal rights and tax allowances and pay talks and backbenchers and partnership, but there has been a disturbing ignorance of the most important issue: the rights of children to quality care and education in their early years.

Irish children are being neglected by the State on the issue of childcare. And in the one year when a Budget surplus of £1 billion seemed to guarantee that finally the State would do something, it did nothing.

Pity our children, who are the orphans of Europe in regard to childcare. If they were born in Finland, Sweden, Denmark, France or Germany, then in the first year or two of life they would have a right to be cared for by their mothers, who would be well paid by the State to do so. Pre-school children past infancy would be entitled to excellent early education and childcare, supported by the State and at a low cost to their parents.

For example, in Sweden, mothers get 15 months' paid maternity leave at 80 per cent full salary (compared to three years in Finland). They are entitled to 60 days' paid leave a year to look after sick children. (Parents actually take eight days a year on average). Fathers are entitled to 30 days' paid leave a year.

Children are legally entitled to a place at a high-quality daycare centre, although there are other options. Currently, there are moves in Denmark, for example, to shift care away from the State towards family child-minding situations - but still supported by the State.

Contrast this with the Republic, where mothers have 14 weeks' paid maternity leave and a paltry three months' parental leave, which is unpaid. Childcare is privatised and gets little State support, except in disadvantaged areas.

The only way that Irish children have survived despite State neglect of childcare has been that there are many committed high-quality childcare providers around - but there is still a shortage and it is getting worse, as childcare workers are enticed to higher-paying employment.

Individualisation is a question of fairness and should have nothing to do with childcare. Boosting parents' incomes to purchase childcare does not solve the fundamental problem, which is that the childcare is not there to be bought.

The persistent lack of a visionary State childcare policy which has regard for the complexity of the problem means that no matter what women in the home say about Charlie McCreevy, it is really Irish children who are getting a raw deal. Many parents are unhappy with their childcare arrangements, stated the report of the expert working group on childcare under Partnership 2000.

What this actually means is that in many cases, babies and toddlers are being traumatically torn from their mothers' breasts and placed in the care of a succession of poor-quality creches, non-English speaking au pairs and desultory babysitters.

This does not mean that the mothers in these cases are bad mothers: it means that they lack good childcare. Idealising the mother in the home is misleading. Children cared for solely by their parents in the home also lose out if they are not given early years education, no matter how good the parenting is. The report of the Commission on the Family - which Mr McCreevy does not appear to have read - stated that early education was beneficial for all children, regardless of whether parents work outside the home.

With all this in mind, in its pre-Budget submission, Childcare 2000 asked for £500 million to develop a holistic, high quality, child-centred, multi-departmental, co-ordinated childcare policy that would benefit all children regardless of whether their parents worked inside or outside the home. Yet in a year of unprecedented wealth, childcare got a mere £45 million - less than the allocation for bovine TB and brucellosis.

The fact that half of all young children are in paid childcare is a reality that we have yet to face by improving it. The truth is we have gone too far to turn back now: the younger and more dependent the child, the more likely its mother is to work outside the home.

Among mothers whose youngest child is aged 0-24 months, the labour force participation rate is 46.8 per cent, compared to 38.5 per cent among mothers whose youngest child is aged 1014. The gap is even larger with regard to participation in full-time employment alone: 34 per cent of mothers of babies aged 024 months are in full-time employment, compared to 22.4 per cent among mothers aged 10-14 years.

Considering the huge Budget surplus available, a Government that really cared about children would have transformed the situation.

Along with this baffling lack of commitment to childcare, there is also a tendency to confuse women's rights to equality with children's rights. The very fact that the lead role in childcare has been given to the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform - instead of Health and Children or Education - is a sign of the Government's fundamental misunderstanding of the childcare issue, suggests Noirin Hayes.

Ms Hayes, who is head of the school of social science and director of the Centre for Social and Educational Research at the Dublin Institute of Technology, believes that she knows where they went wrong in the debate: "A policy issue which was designed to deal with the lack of market participation by a certain group has got caught up in a second policy issue, which is the relationship between women who work outside the home and inside the home and women who work in the home."

"The Minister seems to consider childcare and early education as separate policy issues, when they are one and the same thing. His attitude is at odds with everything being said in the research. There is a need for a co-ordinated, planned approach to supporting families in the care and education of their children. It must include a comprehensive early childhood care and education strategy, that is integrated to meet the needs of all children."

Mr McCreevy - as a sop to the women-in-the-home lobby - this week offered a £3,000 tax allowance for the spouses of stay-at-home parents, which after tax will amount to £660, compared to £6,000 for the - family in three years when the Budget is fully implemented. (Carers of older people, meanwhile, are still getting half-nothing).

If parents and carers working inside the home deserve a tax allowance, then surely so do parents/carers working both inside and outside the home.

Research shows that women in full-time jobs outside the home are actually doing two jobs, one inside and one outside. Nearly 50 per cent of mothers of young children are effectively double-jobbing, working both "outside the home" and "inside the home". And an increasing number of mothers are self-employed and working from home, thus doing two jobs simultaneously.

In fairness, these double-jobbing mothers should be given both allowances, the individualisation of allowances plus the £3,000 tax allowance. And what about the mothers who have staff to do the household and child-rearing chores? Are these mothers to get an allowance too? And what about child-caring fathers? And child-caring grandparents? And aunts? Should they have allowances?

The obvious solution is to give the money not to the carers, but to the children. A Government expert working group examining the treatment of married, cohabiting and one-parent families and the tax and social welfare code suggested this very thing last summer, advising that whatever financial support the Government offered families, it must be child-linked.

If only Charlie had listened.