In a previous piece, I explored how mothers in Ireland are navigating care and work within systems that do not function together in practice. While supports exist across childcare, employment, and family policy, they are not structured in a way that enables consistent participation in work or access to independent income.

This challenge does not exist in isolation. Families are navigating rising housing costs, high rents, increasing energy prices, and a broader cost of living that continues to place pressure on household income. At the same time, access to services often involves long waiting times or additional private costs, further increasing financial strain.

Within this context, the ability to access employment is not only about participation, but about stability.

That reality raises a practical question.

If childcare is not yet available at the scale, affordability, or structure required, how can work be designed to reflect the conditions that families are currently operating within?

At present, employment continues to be organised around standard full-time availability, while care follows a different timeline. School hours, limited childcare provision, and the absence of aligned supports create a gap that is managed privately by families, most often by mothers.

Until childcare functions as infrastructure, work itself must adapt to care.

The Childcare Constraint

Access to childcare remains one of the most significant barriers to employment for mothers in Ireland.

While there have been recent policy developments and increased investment, childcare is not yet available at the scale, affordability, or structure required to support consistent participation in work. Availability varies widely depending on location, waiting lists remain common, and securing a place that aligns with working hours often requires long-term planning and flexibility on the part of families.

This is a question of how childcare is positioned within broader public investment.

Public spending on early childhood education and care in Ireland remains significantly lower than in many other European countries. While investment has increased in recent years, it continues to represent a relatively small proportion of national income compared to countries where childcare is treated more explicitly as part of social and economic infrastructure. In several European systems, particularly in Nordic countries, public investment in early years provision is substantially higher, supporting wider availability and more consistent access for families.

The result is a system where childcare does not yet function as a reliable foundation for employment.

For many mothers, the absence of available or suitable childcare means that returning to work is not a matter of preference, but of feasibility. Even where willingness exists, participation becomes dependent on securing a place, managing costs, and aligning multiple elements that are not designed to work together.

This creates a structural constraint.

Until childcare is accessible at scale and aligned with working life, employment cannot rely on it as a consistent foundation. As a result, alternative approaches to organising work become necessary in order to support participation in practice.

Designing Work Around Care

If childcare cannot yet provide a consistent foundation for employment, then work itself must adapt to the realities of care.

At present, employment structures in Ireland continue to assume full-time availability across standard working hours. This model does not reflect how caregiving operates in practice, particularly for mothers of school-aged children, where the day is structured around school hours, limited after-school provision, and the ongoing coordination of care.

Designing work around care offers a practical response to this gap.

School-hour roles provide one such pathway. By aligning working hours with the school day, they allow mothers to access employment without relying on unavailable or unaffordable childcare. While these roles are often limited in availability, their expansion across sectors could significantly increase access to work for those currently excluded.

Alongside this, remote and flexible working arrangements can reduce the constraints created by location and rigid scheduling. When combined with structured job-sharing models, they offer a way to maintain continuity within organisations while distributing working hours in a way that reflects caregiving responsibilities.

These approaches are not new, but they are not yet implemented at the scale required to create meaningful access to employment.

Importantly, this is not about reducing work, but about redesigning it. It is about recognising that participation in employment depends not only on opportunity, but on whether roles are structured in a way that people can realistically engage with.

When work is designed with care in mind, it creates pathways back into employment, supports financial independence, and allows mothers to remain connected to the workforce without stepping outside the realities of family life.

This article is part of Karla’s wider series exploring care, work and economic security for mothers across Europe and Ireland.