Tony Killeen (Clare, Fianna Fail)

The challenge in achieving work-life balance in individual enterprises is to establish policies that reflect the reality of the workplace and meet the many diverse needs of employees. To this end, the development of work-life balance policies in Ireland is addressed on two fronts, first, through appropriate legislative measures which provide for statutory entitlements such as maternity leave, adoptive leave, carer's leave and parental leave as well as maximum working hours, rest periods, annual leave and public holiday entitlements and, second, through the voluntary approach which is supported by the work of the national framework committee for work-life balance policies.

The committee, which was established under the social partnership process and chaired by my Department, is charged with supporting and facilitating the development of family-friendly policies at the level of the enterprise through the development of a package of practical measures. One of the tasks of the committee is to examine how best to improve access to family-friendly working arrangements to realise the potential benefits that these arrangements would offer from an equality and competitiveness perspective.

The Government is committed to the two-pronged approach to achieving the goal of making workplaces more family friendly, namely, the provision of statutory entitlements through legislative measures and the voluntary approach at the level of the enterprise, which is encouraged at national level by the national framework committee for work-life balance policies.

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