Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this point. He has engaged with me directly about this and I have issued a response. It is an important point. As we work towards the full transposition of the work-life balance directive, we will have to continue to look at the position regarding carer's leave. It is covered under Article 6 of the directive, which provides for five days of annual carer's leave for workers providing personal care or support to a relative or person living in the same household. As the Deputy said, it is designed around trying to assist in balancing those caring responsibilities with work and potential reintegration in the workforce, or allow some compromises between the two. We have quite a different system of carer's leave. We currently provide for a minimum of 13 weeks and up to a maximum of 104 weeks of carer's leave for employees and an application of carer's leave for less than 13 weeks may be refused by an employer. To avail of carer's leave currently, an employee must have worked for his or her employer for 12 months without a break in the employment.

When one reads what is currently provided for under domestic legislation and what is provided for in the directive, they do not match up, so we will have to do further work on that. The transposition of this directive has to be completed by August 2022, barring one section, we have to come back to it to fulfil our obligations under EU law, so I will continue to engage with the Deputy on this point.

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