Lisa Chambers (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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Deputy O'Loughlin and I drafted that Bill, so it is of particular interest to me. We have an issue that for women who are self-employed and running their own business or in public life, dad gets two weeks and immediately they are wondering who is going to mind the baby because the woman has to get back and open her shop or open her accountancy practice, or whatever it might be. It seems an undue burden. It seems silly because there is leave there but we have somehow decided that only one parent can take it and the other cannot. Parents are immediately faced with paying for very expensive childcare, as Dr. Healy rightly pointed out, and many of those facilities will not take a child of that age. Why do we keep this extra pressure? We are all in agreement on wanting to increase leave overall and sharing the caring responsibilities. To be fair to new fathers, we only give them two weeks and we do not allow them to take any more, so how can we have that culture change and that shift in mentality if we do not have anything for people to change to?

I welcome Ms Murphy's comment that, in principle, she welcomes the idea. I want to be very clear that I am not suggesting we take leave away from mothers. However, in situations where the leave is not available to a mother in any event, would it not be better for her, the father and their child to use existing entitlements at no extra cost to the Exchequer while, in the short, medium and long term, we work on increasing leave overall?