Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Covid-19 did not come bearing any gifts but it did bring us a new awareness of how we are living both for better and for worse. Many people have made major changes to how they work and live. I know there are many more who would do so if they had the proper opportunity. We also know that during lockdown, many fathers welcomed the opportunity to spend more time with their children and realised what both had been missing out on.

This Bill transposes an EU directive on the issue of work-life balance. It is both timely and welcome. The work development we read about - so-called quiet quitting - is so much more than a headline or soft feature. People are re-evaluating their priorities and working to live as opposed to living to work. The quiet in their working lives brought about by the pandemic made them realise that much of their working life is superfluous or busyness for its own sake.

As a culture, we sometimes put busyness on a pedestal where people try to outdo themselves saying how they worked through pneumonia or the flu and looking for medals. Other examples include women back at their desks days after childbirth and President Biden going to great lengths to tell us how he was working from home during Covid as if it is not just desirable but required. It is a case of work life first and life a very poor second. If we are to live and work well, flexibility is needed. This is especially the case when it comes to full participation by women.

The incentives outlined here are welcome but they must be matched by equal improvements in affordable and accessible childcare. I have lost count of the number of highly qualified women in north Kildare who tell me they are considering giving up work because they cannot get the childcare they need. Generally for the privilege of earning a percentage of what their male co-workers might earn because of the gender pay gap, these women hand over their children, generally to other women. Even taking into account the gender pay gap, they have to earn enough to pay two women just for the privilege of working. There is real solidarity in that act. The women who mind these children deserve to be paid well. Other mothers tell me they are thinking of giving up work because they cannot get a place on a bus scoile for their child to get to school. It is particularly galling for them because they were presented with this as though it was something they were getting for free.

The provisions of this Bill depend on getting many other things in the State right such as buses. We spoke about Go-Ahead Ireland buses this morning. We are so time-poor and are waiting for buses that do not turn up. We see workers fed up to the gills, late to work or facing final warnings from their employers so we have to get the balance right. These are the basics. Public transport and somebody to mind their baby would be a good place to start. I hate the phrase "joined-up thinking" but it would be good if we could get on with it.

My party has called for payment or allowance for medical care leave and that lone parents should be entitled to double the amount of leave for medical care purposes to account for the absent parent.

I put the Minister on notice that I will bring forward an amendment to introduce a ten-day fully paid leave for parental bereavement. The trauma of burying a child is a heartbreak that some people in this Chamber have experienced. An ordinary two or three days is not sufficient.

I am talking about ten a lot because I believe in decimalisation and leaving imperialism behind as a republican, and ten is the number we propose for domestic violence leave, which was introduced by my comrade, Deputy O'Reilly, and our party leader, Deputy McDonald. It does not appear in the Bill at this Stage but I hope it will appear on Committee Stage. I hope the Minister will clarify that. Sinn Féin proposed ten days because that is now the norm in organisations and companies where that leave has been established, as well as in universities. Big companies such as Vodafone have ten days. New South Wales is moving from ten to 20 days, as I understand, but the proposal in this legislation is for five days.

At the Joint Committee on Gender Equality this morning, the Taoiseach seemed to indicate five days would be a given and that employers would follow what they considered best practice. We would love to have that clarified because, as Deputy O'Reilly said, for people who would have ten days leave now, will their rights be halved? Victims of domestic violence need to be able to rely on ten as their right: no favours, no kindness of strangers, just their right as employees. It would make that part of their life simple, when the rest of their life is anything but.

The Taoiseach made it clear to me this morning, and I was relieved to hear it, that despite IBEC's demands for proof and the Minister's report stating "Employers should retain the right to request reasonable proof", there will be nothing of the kind. Proof should not be demanded or required. I was glad the Taoiseach distanced himself so adamantly and publicly from the Minister's report on employers' rights.

The Minister is saying he will review it after two years, as if there is some kind of moral hazard from women - it is mainly women - who suffer from domestic violence. I try to behave myself when speaking in this Chamber, but the ghosts of dead women sometimes come into my head. A few hundred years ago women were held under water to check if they were telling the truth. As for this moral hazard around women experiencing domestic violence, just take it out please. Demanding proof of being a victim of domestic violence is not a wise move. I know "lessons learned" is a phrase this Government loves to use but it would show there are no lessons learned in Departments that are still mired in legacy issues regarding how this State has treated women, committing women because of what they did or might do, removing their children, sowing their pelvises as what passed for maternity care, refusing them life-saving abortions and fighting them in the courts on their death beds, using their own public money to do so.

I told the Minister before that I believe he drew the short straw. The greatest trick Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael pulled off during the Government negotiations was to leave it to the Green Party to clean up their 100 years' war on women. Physical, psychological, emotional and moral war was waged by successive Governments against women and children, especially their version of the wrong women, poor women and poor children, since the foundation of this State. I understand the Minister does not have it easy but he should look back at the Taoiseach in the Joint Committee on Gender Equality this morning. He was defiant in distancing himself from the recommendations in the Minister's report. The Minister should not do their bidding. I look forward to seeing ten days' domestic violence leave added on Committee Stage.

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