Ms Ethel Buckley:

I welcome the question from the Senator and the opportunity to clarify our position on domestic violence leave. We too were shocked by the comments by IBEC yesterday and we issued a statement in response, so I will leave it at that. This goes to the Senator's point about the fact there already exist collective agreements on paid domestic violence leave. Many employers would have been shocked by the comments yesterday because, in our experience of negotiating paid domestic violence leave with employers - the early starters in this area - we find many employers very receptive and very understanding.

It is important we do not lose sight of why we want paid domestic violence leave. We come to this issue with tremendous practical experience of the issue of domestic violence and how it has an impact on the workplace. The reason we want paid domestic violence leave is to give the victims of domestic violence, mainly women, the opportunity to ameliorate their situation and often to get out of violent and abusive situations. There is paid domestic violence leave in other countries and we know from international research the take-up rate, how much it costs and how much it costs the economy not to have employers paying domestic violence leave. We know how long it takes for victims to make legal arrangements and make arrangements for alternative housing, given victims are often taking children out of a very violent and abusive situation.

Our position in SIPTU has consistently been that five days is not enough. We supported the Private Members’ Bill in the name of the leader of Sinn Féin, Deputy Mary Lou McDonald, back in 2019. That Private Members’ Bill called for no less than ten paid days of domestic violence leave and we think that is about the right level to start with. We do not think the legislation published last week by the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, goes far enough, although we welcomed it in principle and we said publicly it is a positive step to introduce the principle of domestic violence paid leave. Five days is not enough and it needs to move to ten days.

On the issue of proof, it is in our submission to the Minister and it has been our consistent position with regard to the requirement by employers to show some sort of proof that, first, we cannot see how that would work practically and, second and more fundamentally, in some ways it could be a barrier to women and victims getting out of the situation they are in. What we want to do is remove all potential barriers from people moving to a safer situation. We do not in any way support the positioning in the IBEC submission on employers requiring proof.

On the wider issue of the extension of leave, we have campaigned for a long time and we sincerely welcomed the introduction of paid sick leave. Why was that? It was because workers were going to work sick and injured because they could not afford not to. Many of our members are extremely lowly paid and may be on the minimum wage or just above it, or hovering around the living wage, and at that level of wages, women cannot afford not to go to work and to wait the waiting period to get paid their social welfare. We campaigned on and very much welcome the introduction of sick leave.

On flexible working, we have only seen the heads of the Bill. The Minister, Deputy O'Gorman’s work-life balance Bill, which transposes the directive as required, seems to indicate the introduction of a right to request flexible working. There is a very significant difference between the right to flexible working and the right to request it. The right to request is the right to ask for it, which, for us, infers the employer’s right to refuse. That is not sufficient. What this committee is about is gender equality at the end of the day, and the levelling up of women's working lives, incomes, living standards and living experience to what men enjoy. We know women bear the responsibility of caring to a much greater extent than men and we would welcome if that balanced out, although obviously that is currently the situation. We know that women parents need access and need to be given the right to flexible working. We would like to see the Deputies and Senators, as that Bill moves through the legislative process, put more emphasis on the granting of flexible working arrangements to people who require them, rather than the right to request.