Child Benefit payments should be replaced with State-subsidised child care, the Minister for Children, Frances Fitzgerald (pictured), has 
said.
In an interview with the Irish Times, Ms Fitzgerald said that the Government spent €2 billion a year on child benefit.
She proposed replacing this monthly payment with a subsidy for childcare.
However, CSO figures [1] from 2009 show that only 11 per cent of children of primary school age are in paid child care, whereas Child Benefit allows parents to spend the money in a discretionary way.
The figures also show that most of these are looked after either in their home by an au pair or nanny, or by a paid relative and not in an outside location.
Ms Fitzgerald claimed that showed that a high-quality approach to childcare provided far better outcomes for children and their families. She said studies showed that children do better educationally when in child care from a very early age.
However, those studies only show that children from disadvantaged backgrounds do better.
In addition, Professor Jay Belsky a leading expert into the impact of childcare on children, has questioned research showing its benefits.
He has studied the impact that the amount of time infants spend in childcare has on their development through to their teenage years and adulthood.
To date, studies with which he has been involved show that an increase in levels of aggression and disobedience is correlated with a greater amount of time spent in childcare at an early age.
A recent poll commissioned by the Centre for Policy Studies in the UK shows that an overwhelming number of women believe that it is better for a mother with two children under five to either work part time or full-time in the home if there is a working father, and it is not essential financially for her to work full-time.
Fifty per cent of women believed it was better for a mother in that situation to work part time, with 41 per cent believing she should be at home fulltime. Only two per cent of women believed that it was better for her to work full-time.
As a first step towards investing in a better childcare system, Ms Fitzgerald said she favoured extending the duration of the free pre-school place from one year to two, which would cost about €175 million. This, she said, was not possible given the economic conditions.
She acknowledged a move to cut Child Benefits and raise childcare provision could cause financial hardship, but argued that the long-term benefits would be significant.
“I see challenges for families who need money to look after their children. But from where I sit, if we really want to help families, and more vulnerable families, universal services help children do better, stay in school and benefit from schooling,” she said.
“There are real policy questions to be asked about moving towards those services. There are many parents who would welcome universal childcare. But there probably isn’t a country in the world that can do both universal childcare and direct payments.”