Maria Byrne (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming before the committee to discuss this all-important issue this morning. I compliment him and his team, especially Laura Mannion, on their level of engagement with councillors, and I have been hearing about this from councillors throughout the country. I served for 17 years on a local authority, and when I first started off there, were three females out of 21. Currently, in our local authority, there are six females out of 40. In that respect, there are four of them from the city and two from the rural areas. That certainly is in line with the Minister of State's statement.

On the issue of maternity leave, using our local authority in Limerick as example, we have four young females and the two other females have been there for a considerable length of time and their families are grown up. This is a template to encourage more participation by females in terms of local authorities. I have seen that even at training courses we have run ourselves and through our engagement with young potential candidates. It was a stumbling block. In terms of the temporary replacement, I know it will be up to the person who is taking the maternity leave, their party or whatever, to appoint the temporary person, but would it be preferred that it would be another female? Can that be suggested?

Second, that councillors will qualify for and get a payment is very important, because for so long they did not qualify for anything. I thank the Minister of State for all he did to bring councillors into the scheme and that their PRSI now means something for them, because for a long time people were not aware there was no benefit from the class K.

On the temporary substitute, is there any limit on the length of time for which the person can take the leave of absence or is it open-ended? I am afraid that I have to go to another committee for a quorum so I will have to listen back to the answers.