For weeks now there have been, or so I’m reliably told, spreadsheets and whiteboards tacked to various office walls in Government Buildings, as the great minds in charge of these things work out the permutations of the various dates for the dissolution of the Dáil and the general election. All I can say is this: they should see my fridge door.
Other than politicians, political journalists and poster-printing companies, no one is more invested in finally learning the election date than the parents of primary schoolchildren who will be turfed out of class for the day to facilitate it. When I hear someone in authority blithely sympathise with the fact that, yes, it’s a bit unfortunate that parents “will have to organise childcare” for voting day, I picture them saying “will have to explain why matter and antimatter did not annihilate each other in the first moments of the Big Bang to leave a featureless sea of radiation”. The words seem entirely remote from their realm of experience.
As you’ll know if you’ve ever actually tried it, “organise childcare” is not a concept that exists in Irish society. And certainly not at short notice. Unless you have a reliable and obliging childminder willing to shift their schedule to accommodate the whims of Simon Harris and the travails of Sinn Féin, “organise childcare” means one of two things: “ask Granny” or “take a day off work”. Granny will be delighted, just as long as nobody reminds her of the fact that she is not entitled to a State pension because she stayed home to mind her own children, and now she’s minding yours, again, for free, so that democracy can prevail.
One more day – in the scheme of the amount of juggling parents of primary schoolchildren have to do to accommodate 77 days off each year, 2.10pm collections on normal days, 11.30am pick ups on a “half day” – is not such a big deal, perhaps. But it’s yet another reminder that the school timetable remains more or less as it was when it was originally developed in the 1830s, and we’re supposed to pretend society hasn’t changed much either.
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Closing schools so they can be used as polling stations sends a negative message that education can take second place to other events, the National Parents Council said during the recent European elections. I’d argue that’s not as insidious as the other message it sends: the idea that for every primary schoolchild, there’s a parent at home with no other commitments, poised to step in.
The usual riposte to parents raising the issue of how they’re supposed to work when their children are off school – and we heard an awful lot of it during the Covid pandemic – is that schools are not babysitting facilities. Or, a personal favourite: if you can’t mind your own children, don’t have them. For the sake of clarity, nobody mistakes schools for babysitting services; they are educational facilities and much more besides. Teachers play a vital role in children’s social and emotional development, sparking latent talents and interests, flagging when something may be wrong at home or when additional support is needed, offering kindness and food and emergency cash for the bake sale when parents – okay, this parent – once again drop the ball. But since adults aren’t generally encouraged to accompany their children to school, the expectation that you can go to work while they are otherwise occupied getting an education ought not to be so controversial.
The phoney war of words between parents and teachers (just one of the reasons that it is contrived is that many teachers are parents too) serves no one except politicians and maybe Elon Musk, keeping us all busily embroiled in pointless circular debates on X, instead of organising ourselves to make demands such as better pay for teachers and childcare workers. And affordable, State-funded, wraparound care that covers the entire working day throughout the primary school years.
Childcare costs have become more manageable under this Government – the Government says they will be down 50 per cent; anecdotally it’s more like 35 to 40 per cent. But that’s coming from a very high starting point and doesn’t apply at all if you’re using the only form of childcare really available to primary schoolchildren, which is a private childminder or unpaid family member.
Ultimately, the promise of cheaper childcare means little when you can’t get a place for your baby. There is a chronic shortage of preschool spots for the youngest children. After-school care is, at best, ad hoc; at worst, non-existent. And most summer camps are so expensive you feel you child should be emerging with an MBA and not just a free backpack.
The notion that primary schools will shut for the day to accommodate voting is so deeply embedded in Irish society that it is rarely even questioned any more. The obvious solution – hold the vote on Saturday or Sunday – is not up for discussion, because politicians don’t like it. They tried it for the low-stakes children’s referendum and turnout was disappointing, so that’s it, vanquished forever, gone the way of electronic voting machines and throuples as matters of urgent public debate. Never mind the fact that 25 out of the 27 other countries voting in the European elections managed to hold the ballot over the weekend, and their democracies appear intact. Don’t bother suggesting that they could use something other than schools – community halls or even, why not, churches. They’ll tell you that’s a matter for the returning officer.
Above all, don’t expect a robust debate on this issue, since politicians love to talk about creating affordable and accessible childcare models, but appear to spend as much time thinking about how families actually organise their lives as they do about what happens inside the Large Hadron Collider.