Sir, - I have serious misgivings about the human value system which seems to underlie the report presented to the government by the Partnership 2000 Expert Working Group on Childcare. The report is a response to a crisis in childcare, where demand outstrips supply. It recommends, essentially, that:
parents who wish to work outside the home be paid up to £80 a week to cover childcare bills;
businesses offering childcare facilities should be given tax concessions.
What is remarkable is the thunderous absence of any consideration for parents who remain at home to care for their own children!
This report is philosophically flawed and sends out the wrong signals to Irish citizens as to how they should think about children. My objections are as follows:
1. Having children, and having to care for them, should not be grounds for seeking extra money. People should have children because they want them, because they want to be involved in a loving relationship with them. The expenses involved in caring for children should primarily be a matter for the parents themselves. Parents should be encouraged to feel more responsible for their children these days, not less. They should not be encouraged in the belief that their children's welfare is a matter for the general taxpayer. This is not to deny that we all, as citizens, have an interest in children's rights, or that governments should be active in protecting those rights and regulating matters relating to children, including childcare facilities.
2. The absence of any recommendations for financial assistance to parents who stay at home to care for their children, is outrageous. The fact that this omission was brought about by the restrictive terms of reference given to the expert group by the govern- ment is alarming. I am not demanding financial assistance for parents in the home as such. But if this report were implemented, without equivalent payment to home-based parents, then the result would be to debase the role of the parent in the home.
3. The main driving force behind this report is IBEC, whose members say that they want more women in the work-force. Thus the report seeks State inducements to lure women from the home into the external workplace. Where is the much touted free- market in all of this? If there is a labour shortage should the employers not raise wages? If there are 200,000-plus people unemployed, should the employers not pay to have some of them retrained to meet their needs? If an employer's workers want childcare facilities, why should the taxpayer pay? Children are not pawns in a capitalist game.
4. If implemented, the report could be unconstitutional (see Article 41 of the Constitution).
5. I suggest that the government examines its values carefully before acting on this report. If it really does want to engage in payment for childcare, then a better way forward would be to set up a system of basic income as recommended by the Green Party and CORI. Alternatively, or in addition, the child-benefit system would not discriminate against parents caring for their own children. Both these routes would also tackle the wider issue of child poverty, which should concern us more than labour shortages. - Yours, etc., Raymond Ryan,
Skerries, Co Dublin.