The childcare issue is finally being taken seriously by politicians, prompted by the fact that it became a big issue in the recent byelections in Meath and Kildare, both of which will have an extra Dáil seat in the next general election and which, with Wicklow, have accounted for half of the increase of 200,000 in the population of Greater Dublin since 1996.
In the parts of these three counties closest to Dublin the number of young people in their 30s - most of them parents or soon-to-be parents - is today 10,000 greater than at the time of the general election three years ago.
The number of children under 15 living there has meanwhile risen by about 12,000.
The childcare problem is most acute where parents have to commute long distances to work. That is the case with many living in these counties around Dublin. But it is even more the case for those who are coming from further afield - from places such as Carlow, Portlaoise, Mullingar, Wicklow and Gorey, 30-50 miles from Dublin, the populations of which all rose by between 25 per cent and 40 per cent between 1996 and 2002. While the frequency of commuter train services from these places will be greatly improved in the near future, journeys from and to these towns will continue to take between one and two hours.
There are several distinct aspects to the childcare issue. First, there is the need to enable new parents - normally this will mean mothers - to stay at home for the first year with their babies.
As Kathryn Holmquist showed in last Monday's Irish Times, all expert opinion, based on solid research, sees this as being vitally important for the children "due to the crucial importance of bonding and interaction in brain-formation". The primary importance of this is simply not recognised by our State, which at present makes provision for barely four months of maternity benefit, which is, moreover, limited to a maximum of €187 per week.
The gross inadequacy of this provision is merely storing up problems for us - to the time when children who are deprived of this early maternal support grow up. Extending the maternity benefit period to a full year, with some provision for paternity leave and a more generous maximum payment, must be a first priority.
Thereafter it seems to me important to help mothers to exercise a free choice between home childcare and paid work. Of course, for many mothers there is no real freedom of choice.
Under present conditions, many of them are forced by financial need to engage in paid work outside the home. If child benefit was increased, the financial problems of these people could be alleviated in a manner which would be non-discriminatory vis-à-vis parents looking after their children at home.
In fairness, it has to be said that there have been very substantial increases in child benefit since 1999. Its purchasing power has, in fact, doubled within the past six years. Today, a family with two children receives €283.20 per month, or €71 per week, in child benefit - free of tax, regardless of family income.
We have moved on from 1973, when women working in the public service faced the threat of being sacked for getting married, and have now switched to an economic growth maximisation policy of offering additional tax reliefs to those who engage in paid workas distinct from home childcare.
But even three years ago a woman with two young children who was working an average 36½ hours a week had to pay an average of €185 each week for childcare outside Dublin and €245 a week in Dublin - costs which have certainly risen sharply since then. Thus child benefit, even at the increased level of today, would only cover at most between one-quarter and one-third of the cost of childcare. Child benefit would need to be increased a lot more if it is to offer any real help to women with small children who have to pay for childcare, whether in crèches or in the home.
Families with two parents, both of whom work outside the home, or who wish to do so, represent one side of the problem. But there is another side which may attract less political attention, namely the plight of single parents, and of wives whose husbands are unable to work, especially those living in disadvantaged areas.
Their need for free childcare - or at least childcare at very low cost - to enable them to support themselves and their children is perhaps the most acute of all the problems.
General subsidisation of childcare facilities - rather than means-related childcare payments - to parents is proposed by the Irish Childcare Quality Network, with the aim of halving childcare costs. But this would divert huge amounts of taxpayers' money towards couples who have two incomes, regardless of the level of these incomes. That would be very hard to justify in a society which is already stigmatised as the most unequal in Europe.
It is encouraging to see that in the ongoing political and social debate about childcare there appears now to be much more sensitivity to the need to avoid a crude approach such as individualisation of tax reliefs for married couples. In this context, the Sunday Tribune survey of the attitudes of back-bench TDs to the childcare issue, carried out at the recent Fianna Fáil Ardfheis, was encouraging.
Most of the TDs who were interviewed belonged to a generation in which wives generally remained at home.
Thus they had little personal experience of childcare problems. Nevertheless, they seem to have favoured non-discriminatory assistance through increases in child benefit, possibly targeted towards pre-school children, as well as extended parental leave and local authority crèches. It was also significant that a number of these TDs opposed tax relief for childcare expenses because they have realised that this would not help the less-well-off.
If this survey reflects the general mood within Fianna Fáil, there is some hope that the childcare issue may be tackled intelligently in the forthcoming budget - with greater regard for social equity than in the past.