BETWEEN A LACK of availability and huge costs, accessing childcare in Ireland was already challenging for working parents prior to the pandemic.

And then Covid-19 came along. The subsequent shuttering of childcare facilities and schools for prolonged periods during lockdowns caused major problems for many families, particularly impacting on women’s participation and progression in the workplace. 

The Good Information Project is currently focused on gender equality. As part of this, we want to get an idea of how the pandemic created difficulties in the lives of parents dependent on childcare and/or whether it exacerbated issues that already existed.

According to the Central Statistics Office, more women than men were caring for a dependent family member because of Covid-19. The same research found that women were also found to be more likely to report childcare issues related to the pandemic.

Recent polling carried out by Ireland Thinks on behalf of The Good Information Project found that universal State-funded childcare was identified as the top priority to achieve gender equality in Ireland.

Whatever your situation is, we want to hear your story of how your childcare situation has been affected at some stage over the past 22 months.

We also want to know what change you would like to see in the childcare sector. 

We will share the stories in a future article. Please include your name and which county you are from along with your story. Please tell us if you wish to remain anonymous or use your first name only in the piece. 

To share your story, please send 250-300 words to adam@thejournal.ie with the subject line ‘Childcare’.

This work is co-funded by Journal Media and a grant programme from the European Parliament. Any opinions or conclusions expressed in this work are the author’s own. The European Parliament has no involvement in nor responsibility for the editorial content published by the project. For more information, see here.