REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF CHILDMINDING IRELAND
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE NATIONAL CHILDMINDING ASSOCIATION OF IRELAND
Cuireann sé áthas ar mo chroí bheith anseo libh inniu. Míle bhuíochas díbh go léir as an chuireadh agus as fáilte a bhí caoin, cneasta agus croiúil.
Good morning. Thank you for that warm welcome and thank you to Patricia Murray for inviting me to open the Annual Conference of the National Childminding Association of Ireland.
Childcare seems to have become one of the most talked-about subjects in Ireland today, a sure sign of the very changed times we have been vaulted into over a relatively short time span. My grandmother had sixty grandchildren. She minded 59 of them as unselfconsciously and unquestioningly as she accepted the then considerable social, economic, educational and political limitations on the vast majority of her gender. Childminding was largely an informal but very effective intrafamily and largely female affair with considerable importance being attached to the availability of an empty tea chest in which to incarcerate and keep safe the baby of the family.
That was then, this is now. There are 300 000 more women working in the Irish economy than there were 10 years ago. That statistic is a significant and welcome part of our economic success. From the 1970s onwards ever widening access to education, training and opportunity in the workplace and the development of an equal opportunities culture effectively revolutionised life for all our people but for women in particular. Today their talents, which were once corralled in the home, are now contributing hugely to the fresh culture of achievement, entrepreneurialism, dynamism and success which characterises modern Ireland. However, one thing remains common to these two very different world experiences that separate us from our mothers and grandmothers and that is the truth of the saying “What is learnt in childhood is engraved on stone.”
If Irish women have become much more personally ambitious for themselves, they have also become very ambitious to ensure that their children get the very best childhoods possible across the whole spectrum of things which go to make up a well-engraved childhood. If Irish men have become facilitators and encouragers of this manifestly economically successful emerging culture of partnership and full civic equality, they too have become ambitious that the success, imagination and commitment we experience in so many areas of endeavour will be brought to bear on the most crucial and vulnerable building block of our society, and that is the rearing and education of the next generation. We have stewardship of their futures and, with each unique, individual child, we get one go around. We can engrave badly on a stone, pick up another one and start again. We cannot do that with our children. We either get it right and they blossom instinctively or we get it wrong and they carry the marks of our mistakes over a lifetime.
So childminding matters and it matters more than a lot. It has to be done by people who know how to engrave on that child’s life well. It has to be done in an environment that is child-centred where a child can safely socialise, play, learn, relax, be spontaneous and be helped to go the journey into the self that reveals the talents, the gifts, the weaknesses and the strengths unique to each human being. Childminding has to be done in an affirming environment for as we say in Irish “Mol an óige is tiocfaidh sí”, a wise saying we are only beginning to truly comprehend and to mainstream. Childminding is an important part of the mosaic of rearing children and so your conference is a crucial part of the journey. We in this very dynamic society have to go on trying to chart the best way forward for our children, their families and for our society. Our ambition as a society is simple to articulate - we want the very best for our children. They are entitled to no less. Our challenge is to find and to promote what is the best set of responses to the complex, demanding world we live in so that parents and children feel supported, and are supported, that they are confident in those supports, have good access to them and are able to enjoy a quality family life in parallel with community and working life.
As our lives have been reshaped these past two decades we have witnessed the growth of many new and innovative childcare initiatives, more crèches and nursery schools, more flexible hours in the crèches and in the workplace, after-schools clubs, earlier opening in some schools, even the provision of breakfast for pupils, and many more as individuals and organisations adapt imaginatively to new circumstances. We have seen the former informal and undervalued role of childminder come under scrutiny and pressure with sensible demands for greater training and professionalism, for comfort on matters like insurance and registered status, as well as increased and welcome recognition of the value of quality home-based care. A long-overdue respect for the role of the childminder has emerged as its complexity has been subject to greater interest and scrutiny.
The National Childminding Association of Ireland has been an authoritative and insistent voice throughout this ongoing and necessary debate as well as a vital source of advice and assistance to service-deliverers around the country. Your Childminding Handbook, recently published in both English and Irish, gives an excellent description of the multiple skills a successful childminder needs to bring to the job, caregiver, manager, educator, negotiator, organiser, co-ordinator and even accountant. These are daunting responsibilities in a very sophisticated and accountability-oriented marketplace so the resource that is the National Childminding Association must be a big reassurance and support to all childminders.
I applaud the Association’s commitment to the development of the highest quality in family, home-based care for children and wish you well in your discussions and deliberations at this Conference. Each child you help to become strong is a strong citizen and strong citizens make for a strong country. Your work is a direct investment in our civic society as well as a formidable and life-shaping investment in the well-being of our children.
You deserve our appreciation, our respect and our support. May I wish you every success in the future and may you have an enjoyable and productive conference.
Go raibh maith agaibh, go léir.