Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy has made excellent points and I will bring them back to the Department. As the Deputy knows, the First 5 strategy is whole-of-Government and cross-departmental. It is within this context I have been answering that new strategies and support for parents will operate. The Deputy is right that we need to take a look at working across Departments. I share with the Deputy the concerns of those fathers and the need for the support of the State in new ways to what we have done before, if we can find what those ways are. The resource report offers us some evidence to help us to this. It will enable us to deal with the inequalities between women and men, particularly in the context of parenting where we need that equality and the sharing of caring responsibility to enable us to work, men as well as women, in the public as well as the private sphere.

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