One of the big new findings from the latest report from the Government’s longtitudinal study on children, Growing Up in Ireland, was that children feel less close to their parents if their parents work long hours.

This is hardly surprising but it is a reason for worry, especially if, as we hear our politicians continuously assert, we have the best interests of children at heart, rather than simply the interests of the economy.

One thing the finding ought to do, is prompt the Government to reconsider the tax individualisation policy which is blatantly biased in favour of couples where both work outside the home over couples where one parent stays at home to mind the children and the other goes out to work.

If we are as child-centered as we claim to be, then we should be making it easier, not harder, to raise children at home if that is the wish of their parents.

When she gave the keynote address at our Women, Home and Work conference in May, Dr Catherine Hakim of the London School of Economics cited studies which show that roughly a fifth of women are career-orientated, a fifth are home-orientated and the rest are in-between,

If this is so, then why is Irish policy increasingly biased in favour of the fifth who are career-orientated and why are we making it more and more difficult for mothers, or fathers, who want to spend more time with their children at home?

Tax individualisation, which was introduced to great controversy over a decade ago, treats all taxpayers as individuals who have no dependents.

The policy means that depending on a family’s income, a single-income married couple can pay up to €6,240 more in tax than a one-income married couple on the same income.

In 2007, the Iona Institute published a paper on the issue called Tax Individualisation: Time for a Critical Rethink.