The Government will be offering increased child benefit, tax relief, or a mixture of both to help offset the costs of childcare, according to the Minister of State at the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform.
Ms Mary Wallace told The Irish Times it would cost the same to give £12 a week to every child under the age of five as to give £2,000 a year in tax relief to each family with children under 18. The Government had given a commitment to treat women working in and outside the home with equity, and this would have to inform the policy, she said.
The issue was discussed at a Fianna Fail parliamentary party meeting yesterday, which preceded the launch of the Third Progress Report on the Implementation of the Recommendations of the Second Commission on the Status of Women. It was launched by the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue.
"I am acutely aware of the need for quality childcare provision in Ireland," he said. "Childcare is one of the best ways of giving our children a head start in life, and I am determined to improve Ireland's provision of childcare to a level comparable to that in other EU member-states."
The Interdepartmental Committee on Childcare was due to report in August, he said, and would make recommendations. Ms Wallace told The Irish Times that these could then be brought forward for the next Budget.
The examination of progress on gender equality will be taken over by an independent study group when the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform completes the tendering process for this work, according to Mr O'Donoghue. The tendering process would be completed in the near future and the study by the end of the year.
Outlining the progress made since the report was published five-and-a-half years ago, Mr O'Donoghue said Ireland had undergone significant changes. "We live in a time of unprecedented economic growth and consequently there has been a very large increase in the numbers of women participating in the workforce."
While the Third Progress Report outlined a number of legislative and other measures which arose from recommendations in the commission report, it also identified some recommendations on which little or nothing was done.
Among them was that on abortion, which recommended that the Oireachtas should pass legislation "without delay" in the light of the X case Supreme Court ruling. It outlined the various discussions of the subject in the Constitutional Review Group and the All-Party Committee on the Constitution, and the Trinity College research. The issue is now with a Cabinet committee, which is overseeing the work of an interdepartmental working group. This has been working on a Green Paper since December 1997.
The recommendation on community property, which essentially provided for spouses to have joint access to income and assets, is also in abeyance, following a Supreme Court judgment which ruled that the automatic joint ownership of the family home, as proposed by the 1993 Matrimonial Home Bill, was unconstitutional.