OPINION/Meadb Ruane: The next government could turn round the crisis in Irish childcare for less than the cost of a football stadium. In less time than it takes to walk the verdant golf courses that outnumber children's playgrounds all over the country, the next government could swing childcare policy round to match real life.
Who will do it? By 2007, if the next government lasts that long, the stresses and uncertainty parents and children face at almost every turn of the official wheel could be hugely relieved. Life wouldn't be perfect, but it would be a whole lot easier.
It ought to be. Ireland is still playing catch-up with other European Union countries, with parents of young children facing a steeper uphill climb than anywhere else in western Europe.
This is fact, not opinion. If you feel stressed about your childcare or home-life balance, you are one of thousands wondering how to make it work.
Childcare strategy differs sharply in the main political parties' election manifestos and even if some of the promises are no more than words, the differences in attitude beneath them are telling in themselves.
They revolve partly on the Boston-Berlin axis about free enterprise versus state regulation, but rather than climb an ideological gum tree, parents can look at who says what.
Fianna Fáil and the PDs spent five years promoting an industrial model of childcare and do not plan change. They talk about childcare in the language of the marketplace, using words like supply and demand, which converts in the manifestos to a FF promise of 30,000 new creche places and a Progressive Democrat promise of 40,000. Their emphasis is almost wholly on supply.
Parents won't get tax breaks or credits for childcare expenses, because they are no more nor less than consumers. FF and the PDs otherwise pioneered the craft of the tax cut, but won't countenance it here for various reasons. They see childcare as a business, not a service. In business, you pay your money and you take your chances.
Climbing a few branches up the gum tree, you can see how both are stuck with different bits of ideological baggage.
Fianna Fáil swings between old-style Catholic social policy on where mothers ought work and libertarian beliefs on letting the market have its way. It is as opposed to any state childcare as the bishops were opposed to the Mother and Child scheme, introduced by health minister Noel Browne in the 1948-51 inter-party government, but would probably change, if necessary.
Perched alongside the PD enthusiasm for letting market forces shape almost everything, the FF model steers clear of doing anything to alienate the Catholic right but uses PD economics as an excuse not to introduce positive measures to help mothers in the home.
The likely outcome of repeating this combination is more of the same, but the gap between policies and practice is simply measured. Their childcare policies aren't working - even their own budget couldn't be spent fully because it didn't match real life demands.
Tax credits are what 72 per cent of ICTU members want, as well as IBEC. An open playing field faces the Opposition on getting policy right and putting it into practice. Fine Gael will offer tax credits, which is the mainstay of parent support in Britain and most EU countries. Its cut-off point is €5,000 vouched expenses, which would free parents to choose for their children to be cared for at home, or in a carer's home, as well as in a creche. Were it to extend the credit to care performed by parents in the home, the measure could hoover up more votes.
Labour is more circumspect on the tax credit issue, while being more articulate on better parental leave and supports. Its big idea promises that all parents of children under three will receive €50 a week per child, which gets the notion of a universal childcare payment up and running.
The problem is what happens for the over- threes. If Labour enters government with the payment high on its agenda, it will find the coffers straining to deliver it. If it is in coalition with Fianna Fáil, we may see the gravitational pull from FF resulting in more increases in children's allowance, which still puts the childcare issue on hold.
If FG and Labour enter coalition, their combined promises are such that they will have to move childcare much higher up the agenda. If they were to deliver every promise, we could be seeing the following: children under three would receive either free quality pre-school care or the money to pay for its equivalent. Parents might get 66 weeks' paid parental leave per child, which would probably translate at minimum into another eight weeks on existing provisions, provided the government could do a deal with employers. Either way, schools would be encouraged more strongly than at present to offer their buildings as places for after-school care, although this could get entangled in wider negotiations with the teachers' unions.
Taking every party at face value, the best deal for parents and prospective parents on this one issue looks like a Labour/FG coalition, followed by Labour/FF, with a Green component pushing family-friendly and parental leave issues. Unless FF drop the ideological bags.