Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I agree and that is why it is not contained within the legislation sponsored by myself and our party president, Deputy McDonald. To be fair, I think most of the Government Members agree with us but leaving the door open or even slightly ajar is an issue, and one I wish to see dealt with.

We are talking about slashing the ten days to five because of an announcement made by Government but the three parties in government, from my reading of it, all support ten days. I understand that where it is in existence in this jurisdiction it is ten days. Fianna Fáil first committed to this leave in 2018, supplied a figure of ten days and has spoken about ten days since. The Green Party in the North brought forward legislation that provided for ten days. I think it was about a year and a half ago that the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science launched a policy in NUIG and it also provided for ten days. Do our guests from NUIG and ICTU see the ten days as representative of what is rapidly becoming the norm in the public and private sectors and that such an allocation would fit in broadly with what is being negotiated? The Department officials referenced looking at other jurisdictions, etc., when they came up with the five days, and I am sure they did. Where in the civil or public service is it established practice that that would be dealt with? Is the proposal, say in the example of NUIG, to take back five days from those people or is the proposal that there are two tiers of public servants with some who benefit from the ten days and others who do not? That is confusing to me and if you do any work at all with victims and survivors of domestic abuse, they will tell you the mixed messages that sometimes come from the establishment are deeply hurtful. On the one hand you might say you support something but on the other it does not actually manifest. We all support refuge places but they must be resourced so everyone can access them. Those mixed messages are deeply hurtful to victims and survivors. If we are going to establish a minimum threshold it should be set at ten, which is why we are here to debate legislation that provides for ten, but I am interested in the officials' views on how we should start with this, how we should build on it and indeed what is the norm in the private sector. We have heard Ms La Combre's experience and Dr. Duvvury has experience of the public service.