“We have only one child specifically because we could not imagine being able to meet the costs of a bigger family,” says Marie, a manager from North County Dublin.
“We are spending €525 for our five-year-old to attend five weeks of summer camps that vary between three to four hours a day. The rest of the day being covered by a dicey hodgepodge of annual leave, parental leave, magnanimous grandmothers, and sheer miracles,” she says.
Marie was one of a number of people who responded to a callout from The Irish Times for stories from parents about their experience with sending children to camps during the summer.
“Jane”, who did not want to reveal her name, is a parent to 12-year-old twins in Limerick city. “Each summer is a nightmare, with trying to find ways to work and keep children occupied,” she says.
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“Neither I nor my partner can work from home. In previous summers, I have spent the bones of €1,000 on camps. They start late, 9.30 or 10am and finish early, so you are late to work, leaving early, trying to get grandparents to help.
The Juggle: the issues facing women with young children when balancing childcare and their careers
“This summer I am taking extra unpaid leave and only sending the kids to two camps, costing me about €600 for two children, but not everyone can afford to do that. It’s very stressful and far from ideal.
“The holidays are too long for how families are set up now. And the cost is ridiculous. The quality of camps varies hugely and you are stuck, so have to pay.”
Irish primary school holidays run from the last week of June until the week in which September 1st falls. Post-primary schools have a longer break due to the start of State exams in June, closing before the first Monday of that month.
This arrangement means working parents must find alternative childcare arrangements for up to 12 weeks of the summer, when the statutory minimum is four weeks paid annual leave per year.
Grace Healy, a chemical engineer from Co Cork, has devised a spreadsheet filled with art, sports, horse riding, gymnastics, singing and acting for her nine- and 10-year-olds. “This is how we’re surviving the summer when we both work full time. We take a two-week holiday. The rest are camps,” she says.
However, not everyone is happy with how the camps are run. Carol, mother to a six-year old boy in Co Wicklow, says when compared to the European approach where “whole afternoons a few times a week are given over to extracurricular activities and sport, the summer camps here are a huge missed opportunity to introduce and instil sport skills. A camp that’s 9am-12pm is impossible to make work and offers less value for money.
“We are limited to a private childcare provider through the school, that granted, does a full day. But when I asked my six-year-old if he was looking forward to playing in the fields, trips and trying different sports, he said no. It would be the same as Easter and Halloween camps – sitting down doing theme crafts, in the yard running around with pals a bit.
“Parents are now usually older and both working full time. It’s hard to really put in the time and effort and it pains me to see another aspect of parenting where I feel I am letting my child down.”
Another parent, Marie, notes how “Ireland has now been set up to require that two full-time earners are needed to cover basic living costs for families in all but the most exceptional cases. The reality today is that summer camps are an absolute necessity for families with young children.”
Niamh from Westmeath, who has three children between nine and 17 years old, says: “I used to dread the summer holidays. Thankfully, we’re out the other side now with the oldest aged 17, but I agree that some form of State-sponsored childcare on school grounds would be ideal.”
Many of the parents agreed that publicly funded or delivered childcare during the summer months would ease a lot of the pressure on working families.
Jane suggests “primary schools should provide organised subsidised camps for July, just leaving August free”.
Carol’s vision is of “a school-run camp for three or four weeks when school wraps up to focus on all the extracurricular life skills. It could include trips, a hike, a beach day, a pool day.”
She adds that “a national extracurricular summer scheme attached to the school would also greatly help the less advantaged of this country. Where weeklong holidays are provided by charities in some cases, extracurricular summer courses would benefit children for life, and their parents.”
Maria Quintanilla, from the Canary Islands in Spain says, “the problem is not that summer camps are expensive or the holidays are too long, it’s the system”. She sees the solution from the Spanish civil service, which organises childcare in the office and relies on a “summer and winter core times arrangement which means “during summer, the hours are reduced and there is no lunch break, so staff finish their shift at lunchtime. During winter, the hours are made up.”
But is public or organisational childcare over the summer holidays a realistic prospect? Parents are despondent: “If change comes, it will be long after the problem is no longer mine to contend with,” says Marie.
Niamh adds: “I wouldn’t hold my breath. As long as the Catholic Church continues its stranglehold on Irish educational facilities, such logical and, dare I say it, women-friendly arrangements, can only be a pipe dream.”
