Kathleen Funchion (Carlow-Kilkenny, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to say that Sinn Féin welcomes this legislation on parental leave. Paid parental leave is absolutely key and vital. People often talk about the element of existing parental leave that is unpaid and it is unrealistic for many people to avail of it because it is unpaid. It is important that any leave given is paid leave. We welcome that.

I will echo some of the points made by previous speakers, in particular my colleague, Deputy Kerrane, relating to surrogacy. That is a vital and important piece to add. It is becoming much more common and more people are availing of it, which is fantastic, but parental leave also needs to be there for those people. We also need to think about lone parents. I welcome the fact this leave is being put in place but we should see it as a first step. We must do a huge amount more around the extension of maternity, paternity and parental leave. In all of this debate, we must focus on and remember how difficult it is to parent alone. That is a key element to this issue. I support the calls for leave to be doubled for anybody who is parenting alone. That is one way to recognise the difficulty of the role of a lone parent. We cannot ever forget that in this debate because it is important.

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