Pat Carey (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important progressive social legislation. As Deputy Dennehy reminded the House, while the Bill proposes to amend the Parental Leave Act 1998 it proposes also to implement the EU directive on parental leave. I agree with him that were it not for the EU we would be very far behind in the area of social protection legislation. The Bill arises from ongoing agreements between the social partners and the Government and further endorses the ongoing relationship between the two in respect of good governance. The Bill is one of many necessary elements of the renewal and review of certain aspects of employment legislation and aims to further reconcile work and family life and to promote equal opportunities between men and women. It forms an additional part of progressive social legislation which in the current climate is important. While it is a short Bill the implementation and policing particularly of sections 7, 8 and 9 will be critical for its success.

The Bill has developed from the efforts of a working group established in 2001 to review the operation of the Parental Leave Act. The group identified 18 issues for consideration in the course of the review. These included paid parental leave, paternity leave, duration and manner in which leave may be taken, age limits, broadening entitlement and several issues around force majeure leave. The group reached consensus on a number of issues and made ten agreed recommendations.

The most important of these recommendations are to increase the maximum age limit of an eligible child to eight years or to 16 in the case of a child with a disability; to comply with disability legislation there is probably a good case to be made for increasing the age limit to 18; to introduce a statutory entitlement to take the 14 weeks parental leave in separate blocks; and to allow an employee who is unable to care for a child on becoming ill to suspend the period of parental leave. These are significant areas of agreement and they must be welcomed. There are some particular areas of the legislation on which I wish to comment. Much of the impetus for the legislation is to better improve the work-life balance in Ireland. Research carried out by the working group highlighted that employees rated spending more quality time with their children as the biggest advantage in taking parental leave. At the same time, employers considered that the biggest advantage of parental leave to them came from happier, more contented employees. It follows, therefore, that the reconciliation of the work-life balance is important to workers and employers. In the case of employers, the difference is they will have to pay for it and, in my experience, are reluctant to do so.

We are striving to develop measures that reflect the reality of modern life, that reflect the reality of the modern workplace. In these measures, the personal and social responsibilities of employees should be taken into account. Achieving a greater work-life balance involves giving people the autonomy to determine their own working lives and to manage them in a way that is more flexible and more suitable to their needs. In making parental leave more flexible, this legislation certainly improves the position and, therefore, I welcome it. In saying that, however, some areas need to be examined further.

I am disappointed the working group as a whole could not agree on the issues of paid parental leave, and I am not alone in this. By not giving paid parental leave we are disadvantaging some of the most vulnerable in society, namely working people and especially working mothers. Deputies English, Penrose and I were members of the child care working group of the National Economic and Social Forum which grappled with the issue and we came across the same reluctance on the part of employers in particular about extending this measure.

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