Kathleen Funchion (Carlow-Kilkenny, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

If any members or witnesses participating remotely experience sound or technical issues, will they let us know through the chat function? Otherwise we will proceed. As this is a public meeting, the chat function on MS Teams should only be used to advise participants of any technical issues or urgent matters and not for general comments or statements. I remind members who are participating remotely to keep their devices on mute until they are invited to speak. When they are speaking, I ask that where possible, they have their camera switched on and be mindful that we are in public session.

I remind members of the constitutional requirement that they must be physically present within the confines of the place where Parliament has chosen to sit, namely, Leinster House, in order to participate in public meetings. I will not permit members to participate where they are not adhering to this constitutional requirement. We ask everyone participating in the committee room to exercise personal responsibility in protecting themselves against Covid-19 and I ask them to keep their masks on unless they are speaking.

This meeting is to carry out detailed scrutiny of the Organisation of Working Time (Domestic Violence Leave) Bill 2020, which is a Private Members' Bill sponsored by Deputies McDonald and O'Reilly. I welcome Deputy O'Reilly, who will brief members. This will be followed by questions and answers from members, which must conclude no later than 4 p.m. Before I invite the Deputy to speak, I want to inform her that the committee is finalising the list of stakeholders it will engage with on the Bill and the Deputy will be advised of the final list. In accordance with the suggestion of the Business Committee, the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment has been consulted with regarding the detailed scrutiny of the Bill and a link to today’s meeting was also issued to its members.

I advise the Deputy of the following in relation to parliamentary privilege. The Deputy is protected by absolute privilege in respect of her presentation to the committee. This means she has an absolute defence against any defamation action for anything she says at the meeting. However, she is expected not to abuse the privilege and it is my duty as Chair to ensure this privilege is not abused. Therefore, if the Deputy’s statements are potentially defamatory towards any identifiable person or entity she will be directed to discontinue her remarks and it is imperative that she complies with any such direction.

We have allocated five minutes of speaking time. I wish to remind members that their five minutes includes the response to their questions. I will pass over now to Deputy O’Reilly.