Mr. R?n?n Hession:

To cover some of the Senator's other points, the working family payment works out as 19 hours per week. Strictly speaking, it is 38 hours per fortnight because people do shifts and spread their working hours. It is not linked specifically to the ECCE hours. One of the difficulties in public policymaking is that there are many different schemes that, in an ideal world, would be in lockstep with one another, whether they concern the housing assistance payment, HAP, the medical card scheme or the ECCE programme. There is dissonance between schemes. The issue with the working family payment is that it is intended to cover circumstances where a substantial number of hours are worked in the household in the week. It is a unique payment in the social welfare system. Essentially, it gives you a percentage of the difference between what you are earning and the threshold. It is very much linked to the hours you work. It is not directly linked specifically to childcare. That is the truth of it.

With regard to lone parents' leave, we have quite high levels of leave. The European Parliament produced a very interesting ready reckoner on the position around the EU. I have it in front of me; it is a little graphic. The current average for maternity and paternity leave in the EU is about 14 weeks. Our figure is higher. Other countries may have shorter periods but higher rates of payment, so there are all sorts of trade-offs in the blend that is achieved.

On the discussion on whether lone parents should get the same overall leave entitlement as couples, there are a couple of things to say. In this regard, let me refer to the European work–life balance directive, which is where the parental leave comes from. I am sorry to be a real civil servant about this, but the leave concerns the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. We pay the associated benefit. That said, the directive states you cannot share the leave. That is a deliberate design feature of the directive to avoid reinforcing the current burden of childcare among couples. In other words, if the fathers in couples transferred their leave to the mothers, the mothers would take on more and more of the burden.

The issue with lone parents from a social welfare perspective is that where someone is on a lone-parent payment, there may still be a second parent in the frame with an entitlement to that leave. The vast majority of lone parents are female. Let us assume, for the purpose of illustration, that the lone parent has the parent's leave, which is currently at seven weeks and needs to go to nine weeks by August 2024. The other parent will also have that entitlement. With regard to spending time with children and having family involvement, it is not straightforward to say the leave should be transferred to the lone parent. I know the Senator is not suggesting that.