Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister. I will examine that report. I will make a couple of points regarding what she pushed back on in respect of transferability. I agree in the instance of two-parent families that it is right that the time be shared, which is the model in many countries. It is very often the case that people will take a chunk of leave and will then change places and take another chunk and so on, but that is obviously not an option for a one-parent family. They do not have that flexibility.

EU legislation does not preclude us from going further. It provides a baseline but I do not think it would ever preclude us from going beyond that. The mechanism for the definitions and legislative measures required to give effect to this would not necessarily be simple but it would be important and valuable. The EU does not hold us back in any respect. The ideal model is a portion for both parents and then a transferable portion. That is the best model but none of that applies in the instance of the one-parent family. They only have the portion that would be equivalent to one person in a two-parent family. The person who loses out on that is the parent but also the child in that the parent has to go back to work, leaving the child with grandparents, childminders or whatever, at an earlier stage than two-parent families.