Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming in. I refer to the previous discussion about the difficulties in trying to get female candidates for the local elections. We should start looking at the question of the right to maternity leave for councillors. We have a councillor in Ballyfermot who has had two children since she was elected and during both tranches of leave she received no allowances from the council. She does not have another job; she is not a solicitor, a publican or barrister who has other means to fall back on. A basic start we should make is to examine how councillors are treated when they are on maternity leave because otherwise it will become less and less possible to attract working class women in particular.

I want to note one thing in the Minister's speech and then ask him a question about the budget. He talks quite a bit about the need to get more women into business and leadership roles on boards, etc., in line with the objectives of the Bill introduced by Deputy Higgins. All that is well and good but when it comes to talking about the right to free collective bargaining in the State I find that he has less to say. The reason I bring that up is that a lot of women who want to be in trade unions are excluded from them because they do not have the right to free collective bargaining. There is no legal compunction on employers to recognise trade unions in this country and there have been many campaigns to have that in various workplaces that were led by various trade unions. However, there are also two Bills sitting in front of the Government, one from my party, which dates back to 2016 or 2017 and another from Sinn Féin, which try to bring the right to free collective bargaining onto the Statute Book. They just stalled on Second Stage and have never been dealt with. That shows a certain bias on behalf of the Government, which might be too strong a word or maybe it is the right one, towards getting business and leadership on same sorted. However, when it comes to the right to join a trade union the Government and the previous Government have been a little bit lukewarm. I ask the Minister to comment on that. He said he established an independent high-level group that recently submitted its final report. When will that be published and when can we see the right to join a trade union recognised as a statutory right if more than a certain percentage of the workforce wants that recognition? That is an important issue for the women who have been mentioned earlier, those who do the low-paid minimum wage work in particular.

The last question I have is on the budget. I am asking the following question on behalf of the Single Parents Acting for the Rights of Kids, SPARK, which is an advocacy group for lone parents. It is worried that the childcare credit is not listed in all of the credits in the budget. It is worried that because the living alone allowance has a qualifying threshold a lot of lone parents are locked out of it but it would provide them with an extra €200 this winter. I raise that because the vast majority of lone parents are women and that seems a bit discriminatory. The Minister might not be able to answer the budgetary question but I ask him to send an answer back in an email.