Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to hear that because it is really important.

With regard to maternity leave for Oireachtas Members that is also very welcome and something we have been waiting a long time for. To date we have expected women either not to serve as politicians or to hide when they get pregnant and not go back to work. We made it very difficult for them. Enabling this is something I hope will change the face of politics. It will certainly create a more gender-positive image for people. Indeed, my party leader is looking forward to the arrival of her firstborn shortly. As a society we need to support women to perform roles, including in politics. To date we have expected women to do the hard work and meld themselves around society's needs as opposed to the other way. This is, therefore, a really positive development.

To go back to the mental health aspects of the illness, I understand the Bill only relates to very serious issues mental health requiring hospitalisation. That is a very extreme need and I wonder whether some flexibility can be brought into that. Can consideration be given to mental health illnesses that do not end up with a person being hospitalised but do cause significant challenges and difficulties to a mother trying to bond with her child?

When we come back to all this, ultimately, what we want is to give all mothers the same opportunity to enjoy time with and get to know their baby and get to know who they are as a mother. That maternity leave period is really important and if it is delayed or impacted in some way, it is important to be able to pause it. If people have mental health challenges, being able to pause without the need for that serious mental health difficulty to be accounted for would be important.

The first thing I want to note, which my Sinn Féin colleague may have referenced, is the impact on the decision to exclude babies under the age of six months from the system the Minister has put in place. When we look at the policies and this Bill, in which the Minister recognises the importance of maternity leave and bonding for the mother and the baby, it is as if one part the Minister's policies and one part of who he is recognise that the first six months are incredibly important. It just seems to be the opposite of the policy position the Minister took with regard to the mother and baby homes scheme and the exclusion from that scheme of those who were aged under six months. We are coming up to an election so I am not sure if there is any hope of getting that reversed, but if there is something the Minister could do, I know many people would appreciate it. That is something that was hard for many people to understand.

With regard to the retention of records, again, this is very welcome. I commend the work of Justice for Magdalenes Research, the Adoption Rights Alliance and the Clann Project, which I know support these measures. They have asked all of us to support them as well. It is, therefore, good to see this before the House. Northern Ireland passed similar legislation in 2022 and it is only right that we are now joining it on this front. This Bill is important in the context of the general data protection regulation, GDPR. We cannot allow institutions to hide behind GDPR and destroy records on the ground of minimising the amount of data they hold. The current guidelines around the retention of records within the HSE provide that data is saved for the lifetime of the patient plus eight years. In the context of this Bill, and due to the importance of retaining records on institutionalisation for us to have a full picture of the history of this State, it is important that the Minister work with the HSE to examine records it holds that should be preserved. This is of particular concern with regard to psychiatric institutions and other institutions that may fall under the category of what the Seán McDermott Street archive is seeking to preserve. That is one point to make.

With regard to the instances where we know records are not being properly preserved, it is right that these be established as offences. Can the Minister clarify whether the National Archives of Ireland will have the power to seize those records when we know their preservation is endangered and also whether there is potential for these instances to be treated as offences?

This is an important first step. We need to make every effort to preserve the records that are currently in existence. The next step is really to determine access and ensure that every survivor who wishes to access his or her own information can do so.

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