The absence of tax relief for childcare costs in yesterday's Budget was criticised last night as "extremely disappointing" by SIPTU's national equality secretary, Ms Rosheen Callender. Increases in child benefit for first and second children by £25 to £67.50 (€31.74 to €85.71) per month and by £30 to £86 per month for third and subsequent children were introduced by the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, as the first step in a three-year programme.
The new rates will be payable from next June, which is three months earlier than usual. The Minister said there was now wider appreciation of the complexity of the childcare issue but that the "fairest, most equitable and most pro-choice way is to go down the child benefit route".
Ms Callender said the failure to address the needs of working parents by introducing tax relief for childcare costs was extremely disappointing. She said Fianna Fail had promised in 1997 that homebased carers be given a tax-free allowance and that working parents would receive an equivalent amount of tax relief.
She said the failure to deliver on that commitment was "all the more astounding given that the cost of purchased childcare has roughly doubled since that 1997 promise was made".
The National Children's Nurseries Association, a member of the umbrella group Childcare 2000, said the Government had missed the point of the childcare debate by once again failing to address the supply side issues.
The Fine Gael spokeswoman on Social, Community and Family Affairs, Ms Frances Fitzgerald, said: "These increases must be seen against a backdrop of poor income support to families, very high childcare costs - which are the highest in Europe as a percentage of earned income - and the crisis in supply."
In his speech Mr McCreevy said that at the end of three years an additional £1 billion would have been invested in "children's well-being". Child benefit commitments would stand at £117.50 for first and second and £146 for third and subsequent children, which he said was well beyond the PPF commitments.
Mr McCreevy said the Government had already put in place a wide range of measures to increase the supply of childcare places. The National Development Plan included £250 million for childcare and the Government subsequently allocated a further £40 million for this purpose. There was a "very substantial" increase in the allocation to the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform from £20 million to £74 million next year for the expansion of programmes already in place.
The Government is also providing an additional £9 million for foster care and is extending maternity and adoptive leave by four weeks to 18 weeks at an estimated cost of about £20 million a year.