As Dublin's commuter belt grows, some toddlers spend 12 hours a day in care so their parents can pay the mortgage, writes Kitty Holland
Pauline Madigan will never forget how she missed her daughter Meghan's fourth birthday - because she missed her train home from Dublin to Portlaoise that day.
"Something had happened at work so I was running late. I cycled through howling wind to Heuston station and then ran and ran to the platform but the station master wouldn't let me on the train. I watched it pulling out without me," she sighs, " and just stood there on the platform and cried and cried. And wondered: 'What is this all about?'."
Until just over a year ago, Pauline was working in the public relations department of the ESB in Dublin, just over 50 miles away.
"I was up at 5.45 every morning. I was lucky that my husband Gerry was working in Portlaoise so we didn't have to drop the two children with a childminder at some ungodly hour.
"But I left very early, got the train to Dublin and then I had a bike I'd use to get to the ESB. I had a suit I'd change into and the journey took about two hours each way."
She and her husband Gerry had two children - Meghan (now nine) and Frank (now seven) when they moved from Skerries, in north Co Dublin, to Portlaoise in 1998. They had been renting and moved to buy a house "for half the price it would have been in Dublin".
While she enjoyed her job hugely and "quite enjoyed" the time she got to herself on the commute, looking back she says "this new life really is better for family life".
It was when she became pregnant with Paul (now 16 months) she knew it could not continue. It was Gerry who really called a halt, she says, and she is now lecturing in public relations in Carlow Institute of Technology.
"The difference is phenomenal. I have time with the children in the morning - drop them to school or the childminder's. I get to my gym, meet a friend for coffee and still get to work on time. I feel better and people even say I look much better.
"There is no doubt," she continues, "the children are better for having me around more." She missed time with the children "terribly" and is sure they missed her.
BUT SHE WOULD not go as far in her comments about family life as Dr Robin Eames, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, did when he told the Church of Ireland General Synod this week that many people's experience of progress today "is both dehumanising and demeaning".
"Too many families," he said, "struggle with the daily commute to jobs in distant cities. Children are dropped with minders as early as six or seven in the morning and may not be reunited with parents until 12 hours later." He said: "These conditions would have struck our Victorian predecessors as totally unacceptable."
Though the same is happening around Cork, Galway and Limerick, the most arduous work-life balancing acts are undoubtedly happening for parents living within the Dublin commuter belt.
According to the Dublin Transport Office, some 62,500 cars enter the greater Dublin area between 7am and 10am; Bus Éireann brings 6,000 people into the city before 9am each day, while Iarnród Éireann reports it brings 60,000 people into Dublin every morning.
Until 2000, the commuter belt around Dublin extended 30 miles out to Navan and Wicklow; it now includes towns 50 miles away such as Gorey, Virginia, Edenderry and Portlaoise, according to a spokeswoman for Bus Éireann. "Journey times and the working day are getting longer and longer."
And so are creche opening hours. With some reportedly open as early as 5.45am, 7am is a common opening time for creches in Naas, Kildare, Carlow and Wexford.
One of these is the Tiny Tots creche in Newbridge, Co Kildare, where owner Annette Akerlind says there are about five toddlers with their parents "at the door, on the button of 7 am. They would be the parents heading for Dublin and it is very hard on them. They are lifting young children out of their beds at 6.30a.m. Those parents then wouldn't be picking them up until a few minutes before 6pm so the children might be with us for 50-plus hours a week."
Agreeing that is a long week for tiny children, she stresses they all have set "quiet times" away from the social demands of the day, as well as naps, "so they aren't so tired going home that they spend no time with their family".
Creches in the commuter belt contacted by The Irish Times this week are charging between €130 and €180 a week, or between €520 and €720 a month.
"When a second child comes along you would wonder is it worth it," agrees Akerlind. "But parents say that when they add it up, even if there is only €600 a month left from one salary, that is going to pay the mortgage. People are working harder and harder. But the reality is these days that both parents have to go out to work.
"Of course the ideal," she says, "would be that one parent works part-time, so the child gets the benefit of the social interaction of a creche but also more home time. But that's just not the real world today for lots of families."
The National Women's Council of Ireland (NWCI) also sees "proven benefits for children in quality childcare" but believes the "real world" should allow the choice of part-time work. The council is publishing research on the issue next month carried out by its former chairperson, Noreen Byrne.
THE BIG DROP in women's labour force participation happens after the birth of a second child - from a 64 per cent participation rate among mothers with one child to a 44 per cent rate among mothers of two, points out Orla O'Connor of the NWCI. "At that point, even if they love their careers, it just becomes too much to juggle. And too expensive."
Such women are not choosing to give up work, they are compelled to by the lack of supports, says the NWCI. The council echoes an OECD call in March for tax credits for childcare to enable people to choose to work part-time or full-time.
The NWCI research is likely to recommend a combination of paid maternity and paid parental leave to enable mothers - or fathers - stay at home with their children for the first year. A "parenting subsidy" would be payable to mothers not in the labour force for the same 12-month period.
"We will also be saying there should be a subsidy for quality childcare for children aged one to three, ranging from 70 per cent of the cost for low-income families, down to perhaps 30 per cent for higher-income families," says O'Connor.
However, as much as the perennial childcare issue remains unresolved, as Dr Eames pointed out the problems for the growing army of commuting families are due as much to "failures in infrastructural planning" as to planning for childcare provision.
Pauline Madigan is clearly delighted she found fulfilling work closer to home, but adds even if she had had to give up work altogether she would, if she could afford it, have continued sending her children to childcare. Childcare, she believes, is a positive aspect of modern life.
"Children need a break from their parents, outlets beyond them. And let's be honest," she laughs, "we need a break from them, to stay in touch with who we were before we became mothers having to juggle all this."