Budget Day disappointments

 

I have to admit that I was eagerly anticipating Budget Day. 

 

Oh I knew that sensible economists were muttering about fiscal responsibility and boom and bust policies, but I’d heard whispers that the government was going to tackle the childcare crisis, and when it comes to childcare I’d have taken a good ol’ pre-election giveaway over responsible economics any day.

 

What would it be I wondered, sweaty palmed for weeks running up to the Budget announcements. Tax credits? The entire Scandinavian model transplanted to our fair green isle? I was giddy just dreaming about it.

 

Then came the big day. On went the radio. Boring speech after boring speech. Off went the radio. I scrolled through the papers, and there it was, the government’s solution to all of our childcare woes. Free playschool year to be extended to two years. Oh. Okay.

 

My three-year-old has a birthday on July 2nd. This means she was two days too young to take her free playschool year this year. Last year, when I discovered that I felt my heart break a little as all my plans fell apart.

 

Now, with this new free year, my plans started to rearrange themselves. Oh, I thought, if I sign her up for more mornings at playschool, rearrange my working week, see if the childminder could pick her up twice a week, why I could save real money. Whoo hoo! 

 

Then I paused from my fiscal joy. When was this new playschool year coming into action? Immediately post budget like the tax increase on cigarettes? Or in January, like the changes to the USC?

 

I scrolled budget analysis after budget analysis and found out nothing. I lay awake wondering. The next morning one of the papers kindly burst my bubble. It would start in September and so make not a blind bit of a difference to me.

 

Oh well, onward and onward and never quite upward we go.

 

Daisy Wilson is a freelance writer who lives and works in West Cork. Mum to an almost-teenager and a toddler who is striding through the terrible twos with a glint in her eye, life is noisy, fun and covered in fingerprint marks.