Sir, - The National Women's Council has called on politicians to implement the "national childcare strategy" as devised by the expert working group. At the same time it has called on politicians to ignore the requests for equal treatment from those of us who choose to make our contribution to Irish society by caring for our children at home - to ignore those of us who will never appear on "expert working groups".
The call to ignore us had at least one virtue; it was honest. To the National Women's Council, we stay-at-home women and men are non-persons. Even worse, we are economically dependent. In feminist ideology, if you are not an economically independent individual, or at least striving to be, you are an unconscient fly in the sisterhood's ointment.
But while the NWC may engage in "ideological cleansing", it is the duty of politicians to legislate for all of us, not just the ideologically pure.
A dramatic increase in Child Benefit would facilitate parents who use childcare services and parents who mind their children at home; parents who wish to go out to work and parents who would like to spend more time with their children; parents who pay tax and parents in dire poverty. It would put the needs of children before the need for childcare services. It would be equitable, immediate and requiring no new layers of bureaucracy and paperwork. It would treat all of us and all of our choices equally in a way that the proposed tax allowances do not.
But equity is not a priority for the NWC, nor indeed the expert working group. Is it naive of me to believe that our politicians will be any different? - Yours, etc., Brendan G. Conroy,
Mulvey Park, Windy Arbour, Dublin 14.