Analysis: For the Government, tackling the childcare problem is akin to defusing a bomb. You may be heroically trying to help those around you, but even the most innocuous mistake could cause the whole thing to blow up in your face.

Brian Cowen no doubt yesterday hoped that, following months of study and consultation with officials and colleagues, he was tackling the problem with a steady hand.

Childcare is a much more difficult issue than the Budget staples and does not follow the normal political rules.

Whereas generous increases to social welfare, pension payments and tax bands will almost certainly gain a finance minister credit with his Government colleagues and the electorate in general, childcare is not nearly so straightforward.

It is extremely difficult to find a single package that will meet the needs of the various groups, including working parents "stay-at-home" mothers and families on low incomes.

The Minister knew that there had been huge expectations on the part of the electorate after nine months of speculation and debate on the issue.

It will cost the Government €353 million to implement its new early childcare supplement of €1,000 per year per child under six, and a further €70 million to increase maternity leave by eight weeks by 2007.

There is also the increase in standard child benefit payments by a minimum of €8 per month, which will cost the Government an additional €100 million or so next year. Add to this the €575 million five-year package to create an additional 50,000 childcare, pre-school and after-school places, and the overall package has to be seen as generous.

But it could not be described as in any way innovative, and it may disappoint those who believe the Government could have used the opportunity to launch a major long-term strategy to create a national subsidised childcare system along the lines of those in Scandinavia. This, however, was never a realistic proposition in the Irish political context.

However, the variety of the package means it has addressed the major concerns raised by various interest groups and parties in the run-up to the Budget.

The maternity and parental leave measures, long called for, could be described as generous while the 50,000 childcare place programme, if implemented, will go a considerable way to alleviating the current scarcity of places, which has driven costs up to over €800 per place per month in some parts of Dublin.

The €10,000 tax break for women minding children in their own homes is a simple, inexpensive and smart move which regularises a large black informal market that has acted as a safety valve for the sector.

The overall package is also designed as the safest possible in terms of trying not to alienate any single group. The Government had a number of options, which it examined in great detail.

The main alternative to a child-benefit style payment was a tax credit system. The advantage of this measure is that it could have provided a very real aid to parents, paying for up to a quarter of the annual cost of childcare, at a more modest cost of around €200 million for every €1,000 worth of tax credits.

But this had a number of drawbacks, in that it would have discriminated in favour of households where both parents were working. It would also have been of little benefit to families on low incomes.

The Government had been toying right up to the end of last week with the idea of bringing in a partial tax allowance along with other measures, but even the slightest potential of alienating voters ruled this option out.

It also looked at a voucher system, but ruled that out as being too old fashioned, hard to administer, and likely to be of lesser value to stay-at-home mothers, the group most feared, it appears, by the Government parties. The Government went for the safest political option by opting for a new childcare payment, similar to child benefit.

Its political advantage is that it discriminates against nobody.

This is also its great weakness, and perhaps the key weakness of the childcare package.

As the system does not discriminate, the payments do not address the actual individual financial needs of families.

Wealthy families that could easily go without will receive childcare and child benefit payments of nearly €2,550 per child next year, while families at serious risk of poverty receive the same amount.

The Government could have linked the payment to earnings, therefore making a higher payment to a smaller group at the same cost, but decided against this for political reasons, again fearing that to do so would alienate voters.