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

We are being proactive in bringing in the three-week provision this year and in extending it out to the first two years of birth. This extension is to recognise the difficulties new parents have had during the Covid crisis and the lack of traditional supports, be they immediate family supports or the wider societal supports that families normally seek to avail of. We have demonstrated a proactive approach in terms of the amount we have granted this year and the context in which we are granting it. There are other positive steps we are taking in this Bill on adoptive leave, such as removing a discrimination against male same-sex married couples and removing the presumption that adoptive leave would be taken by the mother in an opposite-sex couple who adopt. This Bill demonstrates both a proactive and a progressive approach.

I have outlined that we are undertaking the type of work and consideration set out in both of these amendments, whether in terms of rates or in terms of when we bring in the next increases. However, I cannot make budgetary commitments today. They are part of a cycle. It is a significant amount of money. It will cost €28.6 million in 2021. That will be money well spent as it is a good investment, but significant sums like that have to be planned and negotiated in the context of wider budgetary allocations. We are looking at work in terms of the wider transposition of the directive over the next year and in terms of the legitimate points that have been made on support for one-parent families. I have met with advocacy groups for one-parent families and we discussed this. We discussed other issues as well. There is an issue around the national childcare scheme. Deputy Whitmore and I have talked about the impact of that scheme on certain communities and I am committed to looking at that in the short term to see what immediate interventions we can make to lessen discrimination there and in the medium to long term in terms of the new funding model we are looking at and hopefully will be introducing soon. I have engaged with the Minister for Social Protection on the review of the payment of maintenance. That is a discrete issue but it has been highlighted to me as often having a particular effect on one-parent families. There are a range of issues, some in my Department's remit and some across wider Government, and we will continue to advocate on them. I do not think the absence of this amendment will lessen our commitment on those points.

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