Ms Sarah Benson:

There are two reasons Women's Aid supports its inclusion in its current form as an amendment to the Organisation of Working Time Act. One is the reason Deputy O'Reilly mentioned. There is still huge stigma associated with domestic violence. Anything that would spotlight it in an erroneous, additional or separate manner than any other ordinary leave buys into and feeds into the idea that it is not a legitimate reason you would need to take time off, just like your children being sick or your annual leave entitlement to rest and recover or just like having Covid-19 and needing to stay in bed. It is incredibly important in the way that we as a society deal with domestic violence that we do so in a way that it is something that unfortunately happens, and to far too many women and to some men in this country. If we are to respond to it, we need to do so in a highly pragmatic way that respects the dignity of an employee and it should be treated in that way.

It also makes it understandable. The success of legislation like this, in the same way as an individual employer undertaking to put in a policy, as we in Women's Aid have done, is to be able to clearly introduce it as just another one in the suite of employee policies that are there. It is not something strange or different but just something that we have with guidelines and explanations internally around how you access it, as well as assurances around the confidentiality, the same as sick leave confidentiality or anything else. Putting it in there is very important.

The other is a very pragmatic reason which I flagged, perhaps cheekily, at the end of my statement, namely, time. At the moment we have something that is well developed, that has already gone through consultation and which reflected on the experience in other jurisdictions, which we fed into back in 2018 and 2019 when it was being developed. We do not see any reason for rehashing it and trying to position it in another legal vehicle.