David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Section 3 of the Bill amends section 7 of the Parental Leave Act 1998 to update the criteria or the manner in which leave can be taken. There is an issue here. The Chair might assist on this. The proposed amendment in section 3(a) of the Bill raises an issue, as it seeks to replace references to "18 working weeks" in subsection (7)1 of the Act. However, there is a problem with the amendment in that neither subsection 7(1)(a) nor section 7(2)(a) includes references to "18 working weeks", but refer to "14 weeks". As the committee will appreciate, it is not possible to replace text in the Act that is not actually present in it, so what is being proposed cannot be done. Given that the Bill's aims are to extend parental leave, I would ask for the Government to be given adequate time to examine the issue and to deal with it on Report Stage by amendment. There is a technical flaw here.