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

As the Deputy says, the Leave Our Leave campaign from the Irish Cancer Society is concerned with where a woman experiences cancer or a serious illness during her maternity leave and loses the leave while she is recovering. That is something I want to legislate for and I am looking to bring forward proposals on that.

The point on the take-up of paternity leave and parents' leave is important. I do not have the full statistics here, but I recall during Covid when we moved from the two weeks parents' leave to five weeks by adding the initial three weeks, we saw a significant jump in dads taking parents' leave. That might have been aligned with Covid but there was a jump. It is still definitely less than mams, but it was an increase. Speaking personally, I believe we have to look at the rate at which maternity, paternity and parents' leave is paid. I think that is part of the disincentive, but we are taking important measures, and bringing it up to nine weeks' paid parents' leave per parent is a significant step by this Government.

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