Ms Ethel Buckley:

I am familiar with the Labour Party's Private Members' Bill, Organisation of Working Time (Reproductive Health Related Leave) Bill 2021, which we are supportive of in terms of the entitlement it would afford to people who have experienced a miscarriage and those undergoing various reproductive treatments, possibly even fertility treatments. We are very supportive of that Bill, but I make the point that while it would require proof, it is in a different category from the domestic violence leave. In that Bill we are making arrangements for people with medical conditions who are undergoing medical treatment, so there would be no difficultly acquiring or securing medical certification. I do not want to conflate such proof with the proof required in domestic violence leave where, as previous speakers have referred to, there would be difficulties, particularly around domestic abuse and coercive control.

On the points I made about career progression and flexible and remote working, I would direct committee members to research by Professor John Geary, the industrial relations professor at UCD. He found quite stark gendered results in the differential experience of men and women who were working at home during the Covid pandemic. We all knew about it anecdotally but now we have research to show that, even in homes of heterosexual couples where there is a man and a woman at home, most of the additional work fell to the woman. Men continued working and having meetings while women took care of children, dealt with the homeschooling, and did the cooking. That is what I mean by intensification of work, but there is also the intensification of the actual paid work through an increase in productivity and additional monitoring by employers that are using new electronic monitoring tools.

The most fundamental point I was making about career progression, and there is a lot of research to show this, is that visibility in the physical workplace is very connected to career progression, especially at middle management, executive and leadership levels. Our concern in SIPTU is that if more women took up the option for home working and flexible working, it could set back women's progression in the workplace. If, as we believe, that is the case, we need to build in measures that ensure we tackle it. We will need promotional and career progression processes to be mindful of the need to equalise across the staff who are present at work full time or even part time and the staff who are in the home. There are very practical measures employers and unions can put in place to counterbalance this, but if it is not counterbalanced, we would be very concerned that what might be seen as a progressive move, and it is progressive, especially for women with young children or who have long commutes, and the opportunity to work from home some or part of the time is welcome, could on the flip side have some pretty serious and long-standing negative impacts if we are not aware of them and do not all work together to counter them.