Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is very rare that we sit in this committee room and all agree on something. It is a first for me since becoming a Deputy. On a serious note, I hear what the Minister of State is saying about all political parties and none coming together. This has been a huge gap and women have been discriminated against for so long. I welcome this Bill. It is a big step forward and I know the Minister of State plans on going further again. We will engage with him and the Department to bring in the best legislation and the best regulations we can.

One of our councillors on Cork City Council, Fiona Kerins, recently went on maternity leave and had to return early. She felt she had no other choice because of the position she was in. We do not want that. I listened to the Minister of State outline the position. He has taken that on board and I welcome that. He also spoke about sick leave. A very good friend of mine, the late Dave McCarthy, was an Independent councillor. He was sick with cancer. To be fair, every councillor and the officials in the council did everything they could but because of the regulations, they were limited in what they could do. That is another part of this that I welcome. We have the maternity part of it but we also have the sick leave part. It just shows how far behind we were. We will look forward now and we will try to be constructive.

In 2014 I was looking for a running mate in the local elections. I spent a year looking and I could not get someone. I spoke to women within the party and women outside it who were involved in community groups or sporting organisations. These were women who were well able to speak and attend meetings as they had done it in their own different groups but when they looked at politics they made a point about the amount it was going to take for them to get involved. A lot of them were not willing to give that commitment, especially if they had young families or were planning on having a family. This is an opportunity to get more women involved. My political party is looking to the next local and European elections. At the moment we are trying to encourage more and more females to get involved in the party and to consider putting their names forward. Even though we have very strong female representation as a political party, we still have more work to do. We recognise that. That is why this Bill is another step forward in trying to encourage more women to get involved in politics.

One of the concerns I have about this legislation is that it will allow each local authority to have its own skew on it. Deputy McAuliffe referred to people passing away or stepping down from the council. Different councils have different regulations for that. I was recently dealing with a homeless family. I had to bring the case to the Minister's attention. The big local authorities, the more urban ones, tend to have one set of regulations for homeless people while the rural ones have different regulations. Cork City Council had one set of regulations to deal with people in homelessness but Cork County Council had adopted a different type. Cork County Council was not the only council that adopted the alternative approach. Different councils had different approaches, which I do not think is right. If we are bringing in rules and regulations around maternity leave and sick leave and the procedures we need to put in place, they should be set across all 31 local authorities. It is not a criticism but maybe it is something the Minister of State and the Department will look at. I am not saying the councillors will do it for the wrong reasons but the Minister of State made a point there about trying to change the culture of an organisation. Different local authorities will be in different positions. That is something I would like to see more certainty on.

Looking forward, the Minister of State will be bringing forward more regulations. Is it fair to assume that when he has these new regulations he will come in here and present them to the members so we can go through them with him, discuss and scrutinise them?