Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am happy to talk about the issues. I think that distinction was created by Mary Harney, someone I admire very much individually and as a politician. I have always taken the view that the attempt to create a distinction between a vision of Boston on the one hand and Berlin on the other to be somewhat bogus and a little outdated. It is somewhat outdated in many ways that the Green Party is still thinking in that way. There is a serious difference between a Christian Democrat Berlin and a Social Democrat Berlin, just as there can be a major difference between a Boston run by Republicans and a Boston run by Democrats.

I am unsure whether Deputy Ryan knows much about American companies, but I had the pleasure to visit Facebook recently, which is an American company that provides four months paid paternal leave to all employees. That is quite extraordinary and is very much to be welcomed. This is an American company that no doubt Deputy Ryan would like to characterise as something rather different.

Our view, as a government, now and for the future, is that it is the role of government to support families and to enable them, as much as possible, to make the best choices for themselves, their families and their children. How do we make that real? What policy decisions have we taken to show we are serious about that? First, we have introduced the second year of free preschool. That saves parents, on average, €4,000 per child per year. As Deputy Ryan acknowledged, we have introduced paid paternity leave and paternity benefit for the first time. That started in September and the uptake from those measures has been rather encouraging.

I will be publishing those statistics soon. It is our intention to extend that and provide an additional two weeks of parental leave which can be shared by either parent. That requires legislation and funding but we have made a commitment to do that. We have also brought in free general practitioner care for children younger than six years and we intend to extend that to all children younger than 18. In the budget one of the increases that perhaps went unnoticed was an increase in maternity benefit and paternity benefit. As the Deputy is aware, we are going to bring in a radical and new programme to subsidise the cost of child care, for all parents, for young children and for parents, subject to a means test, of older children.

We have also increased the home carer’s tax credit which was not acknowledged by Deputy Ryan. There is a tax credit for home caring parents worth €1,000 a year which allows income up to €5,000 to be sheltered from any taxation. That was increased by €100 or 10% in the budget and that increase takes effect in January, long before the child care measures in September. We are supporting the home caring parents first, before the child care measure comes in. As the Minister for Finance has indicated it is our view that in the coming years, and I am sure this would be true for anybody in Fine Gael, should the economy allow it, we would continue to increase the home care tax credit to recognise the value of parenting at home and we will continue to expand the child care subsidies to support families to make the decision to go for one or two incomes should they choose to do so.

See this speech in context