Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

Today is 5 March and International Women's Day is celebrated on 8 March. I can understand that perhaps men in Government and in the Government parties are of the view that women are rather contrarian. I have to admit we want it all. We want to be able to be part of the paid workforce and when we have children or responsibilities to elderly relatives we also want to be able to spend time caring. From listening to speakers on the Government side, this is probably regarded as a contrarian view. Why should we not want everything, if in the end it is worthwhile for society that parents should have time to look after their children? By the time most people have children, they often have fairly heavy mortgage commitments. When they have a first child it is often possible for both parents to go back to work, full-time or part-time, with child care costing approximately €200 a week. Grandparents or sisters can also be very helpful with child care. Returning to work is possible in these circumstances. However, when there are two or three children in a family the weekly cost of full child care for three children is very often between €500 and €600 which amounts to more than €2,000 a month. For most families, affording a mortgage payment of more than €1,600 a month, gross, is at the outer edge of the scale so €2,000 a month for child care, crèche fees, after-school care and so on, is very expensive. It is therefore a no-brainer for many families that during the years when children are very young and parents want to be able to look after their own children full-time, one or other of the parents should be able to stay at home. This may be the father in a percentage of cases but for the most part it is the mother. We should not lose sight of the fact that this is actually good for society.

I refer to the table of tax reliefs which represents the "right-on" feminism of 15 years ago. The one-parent family credit is €1,830 which is the same as the PAYE tax credit for people working. However the home carer tax credit is only €900. If our lovely couple with their three children were to split up, as a separated family they would receive the full tax credit. I understand why this was done and it reflects the concern of 15 years ago when people parenting on their own had it very tough and rough and we wanted to acknowledge them and include them. We must equally take account of the current situation.

I understand the budgetary constraints on the Minister, particularly with the bad figures for the first two months of this year. However, I ask him to consider the principle which is to do with people not caring for a house but rather caring for children and caring for elderly relatives. I really hope the Minister will examine this. The great coup by Mr. Charlie McCreevy at a stroke enabled tax rates for single workers or tax impacts for single workers to be reduced and encouraged a significant number of women to join the labour force.

Just this morning the Taoiseach acknowledged that many thousands of building workers are likely to become unemployed. A building construction worker becomes unemployed and his wife then goes out to work because it may be easier for her to find work. This couple will immediately reduce to a single earner family tax credit. The tax penalty to them will be approximately €6,200 which they will be required to pay in extra taxes because one of them became redundant and only one of them is now working. I strongly urge the Minister to reconsider this. It will be expensive to re-jig policy to make it family-friendly and child-encouraging but it is something that ought to be done.

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