I want to thank you a Leas-Chathaoirleach and the Minister and the House for giving me an opportunity to discuss this very important matter, even at this very late hour. We had a motion earlier which dealt in some way with criticisms of the Seanad. People do not take into consideration that the House can sit very late. In my own case I did not have anything to eat since lunchtime today and I will not be home until well after midnight. These things are always overlooked.
I would like to say to the Minister — I am sure he will agree with me — that this is a very important motion. To put it in some kind of perspective, I want to remind the Minister that the Joint Committee on Women's Rights received many submissions, 15 of which included recommendations for the provision of child care facilities. We were dealing only with education but, of all the submissions made, 15 of them included recommendations — some of them expanded and some of them not so much so — urging the provision of child care facilities.
I would be very concerned for all women in society, particularly the deprived, the less well off. As I mentioned many times before in this House, it is a far different situation when you go into a housing scheme, walk into a house and you see the actual conditions there. I have heard some stories and I have seen many unfortunate situations. I mentioned before in this House of approaching a door and, on being answered by a young girl, I asked to see the woman of the house. This small slip of a girl said: "I am the woman of the house". In those houses there is very little furniture. We hear so many instances of people milking the system. This is totally exaggerated. We are anxious that people who live in those areas would be happy, that they would be able to avoid sickness and to look after their families.
A fair test of the committee system is to examine recommendations submitted and see what has been carried out in response to those recommendations. Health boards throughout the country have limited funds for child care facilities and these are, in general, for socially deprived children. That is a limited area, but nevertheless it is welcome.
With regard to the motion, I feel I can best put a case before the Minister by quoting extracts from the reports which make these suggestions. Before doing so I will make a few small points. There are pressures on all those family areas. The case is made by some people that by providing these facilities more women will be looking for and getting employment. Indeed, the Joint Committee on Women's Rights made the case that where married women sign for unemployment benefit they must have some provision to look after their children. This would be one area where that would be provided. The provision of a creche in a housing estate would not be very costly. I am sure it would cost less than half the price of another house. These could be very well designed. They could be landscaped pleasantly. Housing development may be regarded as the implementation of social policy. I believe that social policy should be ongoing. It should be revised in order to incorporate requirements of society as we go along. Clearly, it has been shown that child care facilities are very necessary.
I would like to pay tribute to all those who work in the child care area; limited though they may be, nevertheless they do a good job. We have not enough of them. It has been mentioned many times in this House before that traditionally women have been slaves in this country. They have done the difficult work. They have looked after the elderly and sick people. They have got no respite. This provision would make the task far easier in situations where women would have problems with sick or elderly people or with very young children.
About three to four years ago I did a course for a diploma in adult education teaching which necessitated a visit to Milton Keynes in England. It was extraordinary to see the provisions for child care, simple creche facilities. In this country we are very far behind with regard to adult education. There is tremendous scope, particularly in relation to unemployment. If child caring facilities were available on the scale I would envisage from these recommendations adult education would be far more successful. I would recommend that the Minister seriously consider implementation of these proposals.
The initial report I referred to was a report by the Commission on the Status of Women presented in 1972. It is a very comprehensive report. There are about, six pages dealing with day-care for children. It starts off with the position as regards married women who find that they must re-enter employment, or mothers who are ill or hospitalised for any length of time, and are faced with the task of finding suitable care facilities for young children. The most satisfactory solution to this problem is where arrangements can be made for parents or other relations to undertake responsibility for them while the mother is working or incapacitated. Frequently, it is not possible for the mother to make this kind of arrangement and she must either try to avail of professional child-minding facilities or else depend on older children to look after the younger ones outside school hours. This latter solution is clearly a very unsafe and unsatisfactory one, but representations were made to the committee to the effect that in certain areas it is not an infrequent occurrence where mothers are working and that the responsibility lies with the State and other authorities for not providing suitable creche and day-nursery facilities where young children can receive skilled care if the mother is forced by economic necessity to resume work. The report goes on further to state:
In dealing with the question of the provision of day-care facilities for babies and young children, we wish to stress that we are unanimous in the opinion that very young children, at least up to 3 years of age, should, if at all possible, be cared for by the mother at home and that as far as re-entry to employment is concerned, the provision of day care for such children must be viewed as a solution to the problems of the mother who had particularly strong reasons to resume employment.
The report goes on to deal with the number of nurseries at the time in the Dublin area. There were six day nurseries catering for children under six years of age. The report states at paragraph 313, page 131:
On a very rough estimate, the annual cost of providing one child-care place in the day nurseries referred to in paragraph 311 is approximately £150-200 without reckoning any charge in relation to capital investment. The total number of places available is about 1,250. The cost of providing places in creches would, we believe, be much higher than the figure quoted due to the relatively smaller number of children which each staff member could care for. According to the 1966 Census, there were over 45,000 children between the ages of 3 and 6 years in the Dublin and Cork County Boroughs alone. Any effort to provide special nursery facilities for even a fraction of these would give rise to a very heavy capital costs and running costs and progress in this direction could be expected to be very slow in the light of the ever-growing list of competing claims for improved social services. In short, we do not see any immediate prospects of a large-scale investment in special day-nursery care for young children, although there may be pressure for the provision of such care on purely educational grounds. We do consider, however, that where new housing schemes are being erected, provision should be made for the building of creches or day-nurseries in the schemes and we recommended that the provision of facilities of this nature should be a condition for the grant of planning permission for such schemes where many women may have an economic necessity to take up part-time work.
I would like to make the point that where a local authority builds houses of its own, it is not necessary to apply for planning permission. Therefore, in this instance, we are dealing solely with the situation where builders provide schemes of houses and also the situation where it would cost nothing to the State to have that provision incorporated in the planning regulations. In other words, to make it a condition of planning permission that creve;ches would be provided with residential development. That would not cost the State anything in the way it is worded in this report.
I would like to make the case to the Minister that not alone would it be necessary to provide creches in those residential areas but it would be equally important, perhaps more so, to provide child rearing facilities, child care facilities and creches in schemes provided by local authorities. What I am saying is that to implement the recommendations of this report will cost the State nothing. I am asking the Minister to go further to ensure that in housing estates completed by local authorities these creches would be provided.
I referred to the section that deals with child minding facilities in the report of the Joint Committee on Women's Rights. I would like to quote the paragraph. It is on page 30, paragraph 12.1:
The need for proper child minding facilities has long been recognised by those engaged in the social services and it is not surprising that many groups, including the various teacher organisations, who made submissions, referred to the lack of these facilities. Teachers have emphasised the necessity to provide creches and the Joint Committee is convinced that if they were made available women teachers would be less likely to resign or take time off to look after their small children, and thus eliminate further obstacles to their prospects of promotion. It is true that child care facilities are made available, mainly in the Dublin area on a limited scale, by some educational authorities, health boards and by private interests (mainly small groups of concerned parents). Nevertheless the position generally is far from satisfactory and it will only be improved by the provision of community creches on a wide scale throughout the country, particularly in the larger areas of population. Apart from use by teachers community creches will be a boon to parents with school going children and younger children at home and also to mothers attending day time classes where they are available. The Joint Committee is agreed that all future residential developments should incorporate creche facilities and that similar facilities should be provided in existing developments where it is feasible to do so.
It goes on in the following paragraph:
The Joint Committee wishes to reinforce the recommendation in the Report of the Commission on the Status of Women 1972 (a report which has been accepted by all Governments since then) concerning the provision of creches.
There are other reports which I could quote from but at this late hour it is not necessary. There is a considerable section in the report of the Working Party on Child Care Facilities for Working Parents which was presented to the Minister for Labour in March 1983 which deals with the regulation and provision of child care facilities. Women's Rights in Ireland, published by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, has a considerable section on child minding and pre-school facilities.
I should also mention to the Minister that in the Bill which will soon come before the House, Children (Care and Protection) Bill, 1985, section 8 deals with the regulation of certain child care services. I do not want to delay the House by going into all of these areas. From the recommendations made by the various committees, it is an important matter. It is an area which would involve no extra expense for the State. I ask the Minister to consider seriously what is suggested in the 1972 report, 14 years after the report was presented, and issue directions that these recommendations should be incorporated in all planning permissions and that the provision of creche facilities should be mandatory where residential housing is concerned.
