Responding to this week’s Budget announcements, Fórsa said the future of the Irish workplace is being shaped by how working families with young children are forced to weigh the cost of childcare against entering or returning to the workplace.

The union’s general secretary Kevin Callinan said the 25% cut in childcare costs announced in the Budget would help many families. But he said many families would still be left with “near impossible” choices about the offset of childcare costs against work.

He said childcare warrants a more radical approach and demands a permanent and radical solution to be truly transformative, such as a fully publicly funded universal system.

"While the broader package of cost-of-living measures is welcome, reflecting the efforts of unions to impress upon the Government the need for such measures, childcare needs more than a temporary crisis intervention.

“The Government will argue that in such exceptional times it simply isn't possible to tackle the demand for a comprehensive State-funded system of childcare.

“There is, however, a logic to being both ambitious and radical when it comes to solving a problem which the State has lagged on for several decades.

“There is a need for a transformative solution, such as a fully publicly funded universal system. This approach would be on a par with the introduction of free secondary education in 1967, a measure that had a transformative effect on Irish society and the economy.

“In 2022, that scale of ambition needs to apply to childcare for working families.

“Failure to tackle childcare comprehensively means a significant block remains to many parents, usually mothers, hoping to enter the workforce or to return to work after having children,” he said.

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