Mary McCarthy

speaker

1,469 appearances 8 recordings 4 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 11 Sep

Mary McCarthy’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 3.

Appearances

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The Claire Byrne Show · Should schools stay open longer to account for working parents? · 28 Jul 2026 podcast

So I feel that schools have to change, you know, and we should be offering something like just basic supervised play for three hours on primary school premises.

It would solve so many headaches for parents.

Yeah.

So I wrote about this on Saturday in the Irish independent and I talked to a bunch of parents and, and basically, and I also asked the department of education, how many primary schools are actually offering aftercare on the premises.

So there's about 3000 primary schools in Ireland and four in 10 of them offer care, which is actually probably a huge improvement.

Like I don't actually know what the, I can't compare it to anything because those figures weren't available like a couple of years ago when I asked, but now they are available.

So I talk to parents.

And so you have parents who are really stressed because they have to work like they you know, if you have to go in like you have to go in and do your job like you can't work from home, you know, so they have to find a solution.

So that's causing a lot of stress in the house.

And it's not good for kids, you know, as well to have that stress because you've got to find a childminder either somehow kind of.

manage to work from home and just have your primary school kid not really being looked after while you work.

Or you need to cobble together loads of solutions.

And then you've got some latchkey kids.

I actually had a lady on and her 10-year-old just lets herself in because she has to be in work on a Wednesday and so does her husband.

So they've no option.

So her kid just comes home.

She's 10.

She has a phone, which is not ideal.

So that's what's happening as well.

And, you know, it's causing a lot of anxiety.

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