Mr. John McKeon:

Parent's benefit is a payment made to people who are on parent's leave. As the Deputy will be aware, last year the Government introduced parent's leave of two weeks, which is additional to paternity and maternity leave, with the intention to increase it to nine weeks over a number of years in line with EU obligations. This year, the Government decided to increase the period of parent's leave by a further three weeks to bring the total to five weeks. Primary responsibility for this is actually with the Department Children and Youth Affairs which must provide the legislation to oblige an employer to grant the parent's leave in the first instance. Once that is done, we will then build a process in the IT system to reflect it. As soon as that is done, people will be eligible.

The eligibility is being backdated to November of last year. Parents of children born since November of last year will, therefore, be eligible.

People will be able to apply for the leave as soon as it is legislated for. It will take us some time after that to put the IT and processing systems in place. We estimate that it could be March or April of next year, but from whatever day the Oireachtas enacts the legislation, people will be entitled to the leave and the payment. We will backdate any payments to that outdate.

There are some complexities involved. I do not want to talk on behalf of my colleagues in the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. When one imposes an obligation on employers to grant a person leave, issues arise relating to notice periods, substitution periods and so on, which have to be covered in the legislation. The advice of the Attorney General is that there has to be consultation with employers before one can do that. I think the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth is hoping to get the matter of leave before the Oireachtas as soon as possible. Once the legislation is enacted, we will pay people from that date. We have taken some measures in anticipation and started work on building the systems, but it is quite complex.