Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As I mentioned earlier, ten countries have signed the convention and three have it in force. Different countries adopt different approaches to these things. Some countries sign things and spend ten or 20 years actually bringing them into force. We try to bring everything into force and then ratify, which I think is a better approach in the round. What we are doing at the moment is seeing if there are any gaps in our laws that we need to resolve before we sign. This will probably slip as these things tend to slip but the intention is that a memorandum will go to the Government in June, we will sign in July and do the formal handover in Geneva in August. These things tend to slip by a few months so my commitment is to have it done in this calendar year.

I appreciate that the Deputy has proposed legislation relating to paid leave for victims of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence but the Government is doing some work on that too. It might be possible to include it in legislation that the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth is dealing with at the moment. He is bringing the EU directive on flexible work into Irish law. That has to be done by August so that might be the mechanism by which we deal with that issue.

See this speech in context