Childcare on the agenda in the dail today

Also, so many parents rely on unregistered childminders or family arrangements so the tax credit won't apply to them. This would be deeply inequitable.
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.... But could a tax credit not be given irrespective of what your childcare circumstance's are. mortgage tax relief is given to all mortgage holders including those who avail of th rent a roon scheme. give it at source, not difficult to do.

Creches and childcare providers operate in an industry where demand exceeds supply. There is nothing to stop creches from increasing their prices by 20% the day that a 20% tax credit is introduced
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. I do agree, but I would like to think this would'nt happen, but maybe im being too idealistic.
 
Molly said:
.... But could a tax credit not be given irrespective of what your childcare circumstance's are. mortgage tax relief is given to all mortgage holders including those who avail of th rent a roon scheme. give it at source, not difficult to do.
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This would create a poverty trap - the tax credit would be of little/no value to those on minimum wage, who are paying very little tax anyway. It would also discriminate against the lower paid - why should the state pay for 20% of the creche fees for some children (children of lower rate taxpayers) and 42% of the fees for others?
 

Ok see your point, there just does'nt seem to be a solution so.

truthfully my biggest gripe is I have being working for 13 years , I enjoy working and my daughter loves her creche, but its getting increasingly harder and harder for me to justify going to work and leaving my 3 year old in someones elses care for 8.5 hours 5 days a week. Our child care costs have gone up 60% in three years, and this obviously has a major factor on making the decision as to whether to continue working. Myself and my partner are not married so if I do give up working I cant even transfer my tax credits to him, Ive paid taxes all my working life , I've never had to claim unemployment or any other social welfare benefit with the exception of maternity benefit and I feel the government is doing absolutely nothing to assist or encourage woman to stay in the work force.

We've been trying to get rid of our short term debts and get mortgage reduced to a borrowing that we can support on one income before I give up work. We then sensibly will have to marry so I can transfer my tax credits.

now where do we find 20K for the big day ?? ....!!!!!!!
 
Ok, totally understand where you are coming from now, but sweet This post will be deleted if not edited immediately 20K? Thats nuts! Pls tell me you are joking, there is no way you want to spend 20grand on the big day? i only ask, cos we did it a few yrs ago abroad, and no way did we spend anything near that money. We were in practially the same boat as youare now, trying to pay off debts, trying to save for a mortgage and trying to save for a wedding. We also had a child 3 at the time, we wanted more children, but things were so up in the air at the time, we couldnt contemplate it. Anyway, we decide to get married abroad, we paid about 4500 in total, with a gift of 1000 on cash. That was punts. Then we changed the tax credits etc, spent 12months getting our bits in order and borrowed the dopsit for a house ( about 12k). We have 2 more girls since then. Anyway, nothing to do with the inital debate, but your story rang a few bells with me. i hope you dont mind me putting in my tuppenceworth. 20k? christ, im weak even thinking about it!!!
 
eh I was only kidding, that what the smiley was for......!!!! friggin killing myself to pay off debts, not about to blow 20k feeding aunts and uncles overpriced beef ...it will be a stroll across the road to the church and back to my parents garden for a few sarnie's and a few glasses of bubbly......!!!!!
 
Thank god for that!! I hope you dont think i was being patronising, i wasnt.
 
No i didnt think that at all....... everyone to their own, but there is no way I would fork out that kind of money for a wedding..... but we may splash out on a well deserved holiday/honeymoon...
 
Back to the original issue - The proposal which Maureen Gaffney put to the FF meeting yesterday was for state-provided pre-school facility for all children from the age of 3 upwards - no poverty trap, no inequities due to differing tax rates, equal support for working mums & stay-at-home mums.

Makes sense to me....
 
I see a small problem with the Maureen Gaffney proposal: it may contribute to the redundancy of those extended family members (particularly the older generation who currently take a good chunk of the undocumented childcare burden). A lot of grannies and grandads will be delighted, but the long term effect will be to loosen family ties, as many grandparents\sisters\in laws will no longer be playing the roles that they currently play.

I don't know if we have any accurate data on the informal family support networks upon which many people rely. I certainly accept that in many cases those networks are dealing with excessive demands, but families are already a good deal more fragmented than those of a couple of generations ago, and I am not sure that it is a good thing. I don't really have any answer to this problem. Maybe it isn't a problem at all. Maybe I should just move house to be closer to granny and forget worrying about society.
 
Let me declare an interest here - Mrs. O and I both work and we have been paying childcare costs for the last 8 years and expect to do so for another 6 or 7 years.

On a self-interested basis I would love a big fat tax credit or, even better, an allowance paid directly to us - of course we already have children's allowance, which I seem to recall having escalated exponentially since we first had kids but Maureen Gaffney doesn't seem to think that's of much use to us.

We are already in receipt of income to pay for childcare - the second salary coming into our family. Like most people in our situation we've done the sums and decided that it suits us, financially and personally, to both stay in the workforce. We don't expect society to recognise that - our employers already do by paying us salaries.

If we get a tax break we will use some of it to pay the inevitable increase in chilcare costs that will follow. The rest will go into our general spending, causing increased demand for all goods and services in the economy and contributing to a general increase in the price level.

The very problem that many couples quote for both working - spiralling house prices - will be exacerbated by giving those most likely to be active in the housing market (young families) an increase in spending power. It will be a further transfer of resources from the state to the building sector.

It will happen because it is politically expedient.
 
I imagine that there are many grannies and other extended family members who would only be too delighted to be relieved of any childcare obligations, and it's hard to argue with them. Most of these people reared their own children without the the aid of childcare facilities/ preschools or montessoris etc. Why would we expect them to rear ours? I think most grandparents are happy to oblige when the unforseen happens, the emergency etc, but they are quite happy (and entitled IMHO) to enjoy their retirement/ middle age without obligation, they've raised their own kids they don't owe a debt to society.
 
I haven't read the FF proposal on childcare but does anyone know was there any detail to it? Are they proposing to just pay the existing and established crèches the money, are they talking about a nationwide building programme of purpose built state run pre school "care centres", are they talking about expanding national school facilities to include pre school children or is this purely a piece of politicking in advance of the next election?

My situation is myself and Mrs fm work and we have a two year old in a crèche which costs €965 a month - with a second little fm on the way the crèche costs will increase to €1900 a month - Mrs fm's net pay after tax is €2000 per month - if she remains working after the second baby she will be working for €100 per month; so she is giving up work to look after both children at home - In simple terms the pool of available labour has been decreased because of the cost of childcare. If this scenario is repeated enough times the size of the workforce will contract and the current labour shortages we see in some market sectors will increase.

BTW I am not complaining or bemoaning the government - the decision to have children was ours alone (nobody from the civil service invaded the marital boudoir and forced me to make whoopee with the missus!!) and we live with the consequences; my point is that the cost of childcare, like it or not, will force some people out of the workforce and if the costs increase so will the number of people moving out of the workforce.

efm
 
Oh no ! here we go again...


state funded preschool = government good intentions =
usual unintended consequences =
property vested interests get the spare creche money =
bubble inflates further =
even more parents will have no choice but to both work
 
Oysterman very eloquently explained this logic above

 
If people who have kids get a tax break maybe those of us who choose not to (or cannot) have kids should get a tax break on another aspect of their lifestyle
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you don't pay your taxes on a selective basis and cannot opt out of funding for
things tht don't affect you. For example I may not agree with tax breaks for stud farms,artists etc...
but cannot get a reduction in my taxes because i don't qualify forsame. SAHM are a different issue to funding for childcare costs and one should't be dependant on the other.
I think it is about time there was some tax breaks for childcare costs AND for SAHM and the sooner the better.
 
"And I answered. As a taxpayer, if I have to pay for other peoples kids then I should at least get a tax break on a lifestyle choice of my own.

But back to the question I asked you - why do you think everyone should pay for lifestyle choice of someone who chooses to have kids?"

Becuase the people of our generation are paying for the pensions of the previous generations and the future generations will pay for our pensions. Very simple no kids, no pensions!
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I don't understand why we need children to fund our pensions etc. Why won't the migrant workers suffice? Is it because they don't have to pay PRSI or something? If Ireland is so attractive to them surely the govt could just change the rules so that migrant workers have to pay PRSI?
 
I believe there is no way the government is going to go down the road of providing tax relief which will be seen to support women at work. If you look at the various reports in the system at the moment, you are looking at 10bn spent on childcare by 2010, via subsidies or various other proposed methods.

This is the equivalent of a quadrupling of child benefit!!
 

The children of the future will be funding more than just pensions, they will be funding all public services, infrastructure and all the other things that are essential in a democratic economy. They will be funding these things just as this generation and those before us have done.
 
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