Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Just as the Chair had to write that letter, I did not make this ruling. It was made by the Bills committee. I saw this when it was circulated, at the same time as committee members.

To speak to Deputy Sherlock's point, my Department has commissioned a piece of work on pregnancy loss in the workplace. That is a subset of the wider piece the Deputy is speaking to. It has been commissioned with UCC to examine the workplace experiences of people who have experienced pregnancy loss. It will focus on the loss of pregnancy prior to 24 weeks. For a pregnancy loss after 24 weeks, the relevant maternity and paternity leave entitlements kick in. It is taking place in three phases, namely, a scoping study, a qualitative and quantitative research piece and a final output piece. We have commissioned it so there will be a plain English element to that. That might be something the Deputy and I can touch base on as we go forward.

On Deputy O'Reilly's comment on the daily rate, the regulations are not drafted yet but I will bear in mind what she is saying. We will consider that in terms of the response.

On communications and the work around this Bill, as Deputy Murnane O'Connor knows, we put out a report at the same time as the Bill to summarise the work we have done. We got submissions from the HSE, the Departments of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and Social Protection, Chambers Ireland, Cairde, Acts of Compassion, Balbriggan Women's Development Group, Gay Health Network, IBEC, ICTU, Nasc, Safe Ireland and Women's Aid. They made written submissions and either I or officials then had a round of engagements.

It was during Covid so they were all online. I met representatives of the Financial Services Union, ICTU, IBEC, Chambers Ireland and ISME. My officials met the monitoring committee for the second national strategy on domestic, sexual and gender-based violence. I believe I met ISME, ICTU, Chambers Ireland and IBEC twice. There was, therefore, significant engagement throughout this process and there are differing views about the right balance to strike.

In terms of the first step being taken by Ireland, we have taken an important step and I believe five days is a good starting point. All of the trade unions that I have spoken to, and the NGOs working in this sector, have welcomed the introduction of paid domestic violence leave, recognising that we have the opportunity built into the legislation to review it in two years. Whoever is sitting in these chairs in two years' time will have the opportunity to discuss the Bill and whether to extend the leave available and change some of its parameters.

It is important to remember that we are one of the first European countries to bring in paid domestic violence leave. Once this legislation is passed, we can look at the legislation with a small degree of pride, while recognising the huge amount of other work we need to do on domestic, sexual and gender-based violence in our society.