Childs play: effects of cutbacks on Irish childcare

By Ruth Feeley

Labour MEP candidate Proinsias De Rossa spoke at Blanchardstown yesterday about the conflicting messages sent to young people and young parents. He spoke about recent crèche closures due to cutbacks and the difficult situation this will create for many young parents already struggling.

The cost of childcare in Ireland has whipped up controversy and media speculation for quite awhile.

De Rossa said, “The fact that Mary Hanafin is telling young people, including young parents, to re skill while simultaneously cutting funding for the crèches that give people the time and opportunity to retrain is the kind of astonishing cynicism only the completely detached can manage.”

Many parents have spoke out against the cutbacks, claiming to be lost as to how they can meet the childcare costs without any financial assistance. The average cost of monthly childcare in Dublin is €724 and €575 for the rest of the country. A full time childminder on average costs €491 a month. For most, this amounts to 40% of the take home pay for the Irish worker.

De Rossa heavily criticised the governments input adding, “the governments record on early childcare has been abysmal. Ireland has is falling off the bottom of international and European league tables with just 18 per cent of Irish under-threes are provided for, seven years after the government pledged at an EU summit to provide childcare by 2010 to at least 33% of children under 3 years of age. ”

Seeing as many parents will now have to look for alternative childcare, many crèches are facing job losses and in some cases, closing altogether. One such example is Blanchardstown’s Mountainview Community Creche who’s “having its subvention for staff cancelled and will be forced to close at the end of June. Fianna Fail’s call for the parents of service-starved children to somehow find the time to devote themselves to developing new employment skills shows that the government have absolutely zero concept of the kinds of problems people are facing”.

Mr. De Rossa said he is disappointed with the lack of pressure on the government to up the standards for social services which he claims are “treated as a luxury, whereby they will be given money if there is enough to go around.” He describes social services like this as “the foundations on which we would build a prosperous economy.” If elected he plans to press for “more transparency” on commitments made in Europe regarding social funding, where there would be a greater deal of Dáil monitoring over what happens in Europe.