More than half of Ireland's female workforce use their own annual leave to care for their children when childcare arrangements break down, according to a study published yesterday.
The study, co-ordinated by Trinity College Dublin, found 12 per cent of a sample of Irish working women always used their annual leave to cope when childcare arrangements collapsed, a further 12 per cent often used this option while 30 per cent sometimes used it as a solution to childminding difficulties.
In addition, 42 per cent of Irish men said they used their holidays to look after children when childminding arrangements broke down.
The data are based on a study of 100 families in Dublin and were compared with the experience of a similar number of working parents in three other EU cities - Copenhagen, Paris and Bologna. Only in Ireland were large numbers of parents taking their own leave to cope with childminding difficulties.
Dr Margaret Fine-Davis, senior research fellow at TCD's Centre for Gender and Women's Studies, who directed the pan-European study, said parental leave was designed to cope with such emergencies yet very few parents used this option, perhaps because it was unpaid or because many employers required it to be taken in a block.
The findings of the study, entitled Fathers and Mothers - Dilemmas of the Work-Life Balance, were presented at a conference in TCD.
Dr Fine-Davis said Ireland had one of the lowest childcare provisions in Europe. She said while recent Budget measures had been positive in the short term, the lack of a comprehensive, integrated long-term childcare strategy remained.
"The funding allocated in the recent Budgets will go towards workplace childcare, private sector childcare, local childcare initiatives and community-based groups. The question remains: how consistent can the quality be of such a diversity of childcare provision? Were there a national programme of public childcare facilities, consistent high quality could be guaranteed," she said.
The study also found that more Irish parents were dependent on grandparents to look after their children. Some 17 per cent relied on grandparents to meet their childcare needs, while 15 per cent relied on their partner. The largest percentage - some 28 per cent - sent their children to a creche or nursery.
SIPTU's national equality secretary, Ms Rosheen Callender, said insufficient money had been provided under the National Development Plan to provide the extra childcare places required.