Labour would greatly increase parental leave and career breaks for parents as well as introduce a range of childcare subsidies,according to the party's spokeswoman on the issue, Ms Eithne Fitzgerald.
Launching the party's policy on the issue yesterday, Ms Fitzgerald promised "an Ireland where the world of work fits in around the demands of family life, not the other way around".
Despite the social revolution evident in the fact that over half of all mothers were in a job, the burden of adjustment to this had fallen largely on women and children with minimal help from the State and employers, she said.
The party is proposing 15 months of combined paid maternity leave and parental leave, to be shared by parents, she said. They will establish in law a right to career breaks of up to three years, with a guaranteed return to the job.
An "early-years subsidy" of €50 per week for parents of children under three years old would be introduced, to be funded by the reversal of the cut in employers' PRSI in the last budget.
To make childminding more attractive as a career, they propose exempting the first €6,000 of a childminder's earnings from tax.
Labour is proposing an active role for the State in providing staff and buildings for childcare, direct investment in new childcare services, a preschool in every primary school, public service staff crèches, a staff crèche at every hospital and childcare facilities to be a condition for planning permission for new housing developments, industrial estates and offices.
The party's childcare measures would involve €300 million in capital spending and €830 million of annual current spending once all the measures are in place.
"In every other European state, childcare is part of the basic social infrastructure, like education or health, not left to underfunded individual or community providers," said Ms Fitzgerald.
"That is why we propose a €300 million capital investment in childcare premises in local communities, with the State, through local county childcare authorities, taking the lead in plugging the gaps in provision.
"The investment in buildings must be paralleled by an investment in training to ensure qualified staff are available. To attract and retain qualified staff they must be properly paid, so we propose per-capita grants for childcare centres to achieve this while maintaining costs to parents at a reasonable level.
"Our childcare plans will cost money. But good childcare is an investment in our children's future."
Labour would introduce a right under childcare provisions for a worker to leave a job for three years and be able to return to it, and would also require employers to allow a full-time employee to change to part time hours.
The party wants people to have the right to work fewer hours each day, to coincide with school hours of young children, or fewer days per week.