Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I want to support the Bill. It is important.

Just this week, Chambers Ireland and UNICEF Ireland issued a call to action for more family friendly workplaces. They launched a guide adapted from a document released by the International Chamber of Commerce and UNICEF which includes measures that business leaders can take to achieve short and long-term positive impacts in the workplace. In the guide they state that by giving working parents the time, information, services and resources that they need to cope with crisis, family friendly policies and practices can make a critical difference and also make an important contribution to wider social protection.

The Bill proposes, among other things, to increase the duration of parent's leave, as well as the associated entitlement to parental benefit, from two to five weeks to enable couples who have jointly adopted to choose which member of the couple avails of adoptive leave. These are very welcome measures. We all deserve to be able to care for ourselves or our loved ones at a time when they need us.

Across the House we all agree that we need to strive for a better work-life balance. The Government promised in the programme for Government that parent's leave would be increased from two to five weeks, to be taken in the first 24 months of a child's life, increasing from 12 months from the time of the child's birth or placement with parents in the case of adoption. This is the Government's commitment to delivery. I agree with the committee's recommendations on the Bill.

I have raised the importance of work-life balance. There is no doubt that Covid-19 has been a struggle. However, if we can take some positives from it, we have seen how much better working from home has been for so many families.

Home school has been a challenge but the bonds families have developed will last forever. There is no reason we cannot keep business going and provide employees who are parents with time to focus on health and family and there is no reason this attitude cannot apply beyond pandemic times. There should be work-life balance in all workplaces, not only where people work from home. Many retail, manufacturing, warehouse and delivery staff cannot work from home. Many in non-essential retail and hospitality have lost their jobs and incomes and their experience has not been positive.

In other countries such as Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Demark, where gender equality has been on the political agenda for many decades, there are father-friendly leave policies, the countries in question are father-care sensitive, and there are high levels of compensation for loss of earnings. These countries apply a leave quota on a use it or lose it principle, which is paternity leave of nine weeks until the child's second birthday. This comprises post-birth leave of three weeks, which runs simultaneously with the mother's leave, and paternity leave of six weeks, both of which have high compensation for loss of earnings. Swedish parents have a verb, to vabba, which describes being at home temporarily on 80% pay to look after sick children. This benefit is available until children reach 12 years. They are doing more and we need to do more.

We need a plan to make more father-friendly policies and increase incentives to encourage more fathers to take up parental leave. We also need to do more for one-parent families, and while the measures for adoptive families are welcome, we have to provide more supports for single parents. These are, in the main women, and they find it very difficult to maintain full-time jobs and arrange childcare.

See this speech in context