Sir, – I note that the Government is considering what qualifications individual childminders might need under a regime where those childminders will have to be registered and thus become liable for taxation, which in turn will raise the costs for hard-pressed parents.
Perhaps the Government might better spend its time in considering what type of society it wants, or rather it should consider what type of society the citizens of Ireland want.
Do we want a society where both parents are forced to work in full-time jobs, primarily to pay for overpriced accommodation and are then further forced to leave their young children with expensive profit-driven childcare facilities, while their elderly parents are forced into profit-driven nursing homes as there is no-one at home to pop in and keep an eye on them?
Where there is no-one at home to supervise what their older, and not so older, children are getting up to or viewing on their smartphones?
Where it is easier to impose property tax on elderly people with only the State old age pension for an income, while at the same time facilitating massive tax avoidance schemes, necessitating the need for a property tax in the first place?
While people may have been financially poorer in days gone by, are they really any better off now?
Is this what we want from our Government and for our nation? – Yours, etc,
DAVID DORAN,
Bagenalstown,
Co Carlow.