By VICTORIA WHITE: €2 an hour for childcare puts parents on a wage of €2 an hour

TWO euro an hour. That’s what a child is worth as the Coalition’s general election campaign kicks off in this centenary year of 2016.

The pledge, to be achieved by 2021, came from the Labour Party but Fine Gael is presumably singing off the same hymn sheet, promising to cut annual childcare costs by €2,000 for children between nine months and three years, to bridge” the gap between the end of maternity leave and the start of the ECCE preschool scheme.

Pity the babies on that particular “bridge”. Because we haven’t heard a word so far from the Coalition about turning the economy around to value the work of caring for children. It’s all about the price. Labour is “Standing up for Working Families”, a slogan culled from would-be US president, John Edwards.

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