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

I am aware that work is ongoing in the area of flexible working. Some of that is through my Department and some is through the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. I believe that a monitoring element would be really useful in the context of getting the take-up. We have seen a huge increase in the take-up of parental leave by both parents. Whereas originally and pre-pandemic it was primarily just mothers, now we are seeing a lot of fathers taking that leave, which is positive.

On childminding and the regularisation discussion, it is estimated that about 10% of the undocumented migrants who have the opportunity to be regularised through that scheme are actually working in the childcare sector. I believe that the vast majority of those are probably childminding. The work the Government is doing today on that will allow these people to regularise their situation and, hopefully in terms of the work we are doing on the childminding action plan, give them a stable career going forward.

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