David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am very happy to have the opportunity to join the debate on the Parental Leave (Amendment) Bill 2017. This is a significant Bill, and it is regrettable that we do not have pre-legislative scrutiny of Private Members' Bills. I have said this here previously and I will say it again. When I was Chairman of the Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality, we dealt with many topics and Bills over five years and the value of pre-legislative scrutiny cannot be overestimated. I have to hand the submissions received on the sexual and domestic violence Bill. Private Members' Bills do not have that added value at all.

I believe this Bill could be greatly enhanced by the benefit of a consultative process that would engage key stakeholders such as the National Women's Council of Ireland, the trade union movement and the business sector. They have considerable expertise in this area. It would be very beneficial if the justice committee could undertake legislative scrutiny of the Bill, hold a consultative process with key stakeholders and receive detailed briefing on the work under way domestically and at EU level, including on gender equality. It is important that our policies in these areas are coherent in both a domestic whole-of-government and EU context.

However, tonight is an opportunity for Members to put their views on the record and I have been pleased to have the opportunity for this engagement. In particular, I am pleased to have the opportunity to update the House on the work undertaken in government on this important policy area.

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I commend the aim of the Bill. It seeks to support parents and give families more options when it comes to meeting their child care needs. I am sure that all of us in the House are supportive of the tenets underpinning the Bill. As presented by the Deputies, the Bill provides for the extension of the existing entitlement to parental leave from 18 weeks to 26 weeks, and creates a further entitlement to an additional eight weeks parental leave for those parents who have already used their 18 weeks.

I am sure the majority of the Members of the House will agree with me when I say that we must do our utmost to help and support parents. I remind the House that over the past three budgets the Department of Children and Youth Affairs has secured an increase in the child care budget of an unprecedented 80%, reflecting the Government's commitment to parents and children. In 2018 alone, investment in child care will be €487 million. This investment is being used to improve access to high quality, affordable child care for approximately 170,000 children and their families.

As the House is aware, free pre-school provided under the early childhood care and education, ECCE, programme has been extended. From September 2018, all children will be eligible to two full years of free pre-school education before transitioning to primary school. This delivers on a commitment in the programme for Government. In addition, a range of new and improved measures to reduce the cost of child care was recently introduced. These include a non-means tested universal subsidy of up to €1,040 per year for children under three years of age and significantly increased targeted supports of up to €145 per week through existing child care subvention schemes. These too deliver on commitments in the programme for Government.

The development of the affordable child care scheme, which was announced in budget 2017, will add to these measures. The affordable child care scheme will radically redesign how support is delivered to make high quality child care more accessible and affordable for families in Ireland. This scheme will replace all existing targeted child care subvention schemes with a single streamlined scheme that will provide the framework for increasing public investment in child care over the years ahead. Work on developing the affordable child care scheme is well under way. The Childcare Support Bill, which will provide the critical legislative underpinning for this scheme, will be considered on Committee Stage in Dáil Éireann shortly and the development of a new IT system is also being advanced.

The Government agrees with the Deputies as to the need to support families. It agrees with the Deputies on the principle of improving family leave available to parents. It is for these reasons the Government will not oppose the Deputies' Bill this evening. However, the Government believes the focus should now be on introducing parental leave on a paid basis. The provision of paid leave would bring much greater benefits to parents and children at this stage than the further extension of unpaid leave. The House will already be aware that A Programme for a Partnership Government includes a commitment to increase paid parental leave during the first year of a child's life, as research shows children benefit most from parental care in the first year of life. To further this commitment, the Government has established an interdepartmental working group to develop proposals to give effect to the programme commitments. The key objectives of this group are to develop options as to the duration of the leave, the age of the eligible child and the level of payment to be offered; determine the usefulness of adopting a phased approach; estimate the likely costs arising; and align any proposals as much as possible with a European Commission proposal for a directive on work-life balance for parents and carers, which I will address now. The group is also working on a policy approach and I expect it to report with its proposals at the end of April.

The move to introduce a paid parental leave entitlement is aligned to the policy approach put forward by the European Commission in its proposal for a new work-life balance directive. That directive is under discussion at working group level under the Bulgarian Presidency of the EU. The directive's key proposal is that parental leave should be made available to parents on a paid basis. The directive recognises that the provision of paid parental leave will be more effective and more appropriate in terms of encouraging fathers to share the role of caring for their children, thus contributing to the promotion of gender equality. The directive is part of a package of EU measures aimed at addressing the under-representation of women in employment and supporting women's career progression by creating improved conditions whereby they can reconcile their working responsibilities and family commitments.

We have to support families. However, we also have to promote the objective of gender equality. For too long, the majority of caring responsibilities has been shouldered by women. We now have to put in place policies that encourage fathers to share that caring role. Children do best when both parents are facilitated to take an active role in parenting them. It makes sense in terms of child welfare. Equally, it makes sense in gender equality terms. Women's equality has been constrained within the workplace because of their caring roles. Often, they have not had the same opportunities or pay as men as a result. Women's empowerment is a key theme running through A Programme for a Partnership Government.

Last May, the then Tánaiste, Deputy Frances Fitzgerald, and I launched the National Strategy for Women and Girls 2017-2020. I am sure Deputies are well aware of the strategy, have studied it from front to back and have it close by for reference. The strategy agreed by Government has as its overall goal over its four year timeframe changing attitudes and practices preventing the full participation of women and girls in education, employment and public life at all levels and improving services for women and girls, with priority given to those experiencing or at risk of experiencing the poorest outcomes. The strategy includes a set of actions specifically aimed at supporting parents.

The Government has committed to providing a platform of parenting supports for families and working parents. It has undertaken to publish proposals to expand paid leave in the first year of a child's life and to legislate for these proposals as soon as possible, as set out in A Programme for a Partnership Government. I invite all Deputies to read the strategy. It is a living document and we welcome the input of anybody and everybody into the strategy. We have other strategies we are working towards but this is the one most pertinent to this debate.

When it comes to improving and expanding our current family leave system, there are wider and more complex factors, which I have set out, that the Deputies' Bill does not consider. Because of this, it would be remiss of me not to say that the Government has concerns with the approach proposed in the Bill. Extending an unpaid family leave requirement would make it more likely that the lower paid of the two parents, often the mother, would take the unpaid leave, with consequent impacts for these mothers in terms of pay and pension entitlements. It potentially perpetuates the tendency whereby caring responsibilities are seen by employers as the responsibility of mothers rather than of fathers. This has negative implications in terms of gender equality and in terms of the opportunities potentially available to women within the workforce. Equally, only parents on higher incomes may have the resources needed to avail of the leave. I feel very strongly that fathers should be facilitated to undertake a caring role for their children. I was proud to bring the paternity leave legislation through the House in September 2016, which provides two weeks' paid paternity leave for fathers on the birth of their children.

The Deputies' Bill, while laudable, does not take account of the moves domestically and at EU level to introduce parental leave on a paid basis or of the need to promote gender equality for fathers and mothers in terms of caring responsibilities. As I mentioned earlier, this is why I believe it is important that the Oireachtas committee, which I chaired in the past and I know what valuable work it can carry out, has the opportunity to scrutinise the proposals and their implications, intended and unintended. It would give stakeholders outside the House an opportunity to feed into the process. This is the value of pre-legislative scrutiny and it is a shame Private Members' Bills do not have this facility. They could be hugely enhanced and helped. All Government Bills have to go through it. They are enhanced and improved and flaws are discovered at an early stage before they are published. I encourage all of us to discuss whether we can do this with some fantastic legislation emanating from the Opposition benches.

We all share the objective of wanting to support families. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, the Government and all Members of the Oireachtas are committed to providing the utmost support to parents and families in the State. I remind the House it was the then Minister for Justice and Equality, Alan Shatter, who extended parental leave from 14 to 18 weeks, demonstrating the commitment of successive Fine Gael Governments to improving the entitlements offered to parents. Members of the House will also recall that only recently we introduced and passed legislation that provided additional leave and financial support to parents of children born prematurely. Our focus now is on introducing parental leave on a paid basis. The benefits of such an approach for families and for children are obvious. I urge the Deputies to work with the Government to see how we can develop legislation that builds on what is already in train in the EU and domestically. By collaborating on an agreed approach we can develop legislation that responds more effectively to the needs of women, men, parents and children alike. With this in mind, I propose that if Deputies Shortall and Catherine Murphy are willing, I will meet with them in the coming weeks to discuss their proposals and to examine how their approach, that of the Government and the European Commission's proposal for a work life balance directive, once finalised, can be aligned for the benefit of all families.

I thank the Deputies for bringing forward the Bill and for giving us an opportunity to discuss this very important policy matter.

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