Willie O'Dea (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)

Senator Terry referred to the breastfeeding provisions. Following her contribution on Second Stage, I undertook to discuss this issue with my officials and various other parties to ascertain whether I could table an amendment to address the Senator's well argued point. However, I have tabled an amendment to meet the Senator's concerns, which we will discuss later.

There are several types of legislation but I categorise legislation in two ways. I could introduce legislation, for example, to reform the libel laws or the law relating to possessory title over which the two Houses of the Oireachtas have autonomy. We have free licence to draft the law as we wish. If the Opposition tables amendments, which the Government is convinced are good, they can be made. However, this legislation falls into a slightly different category because it is intended to reflect agreement by the social partners on certain measures that will cost employers while giving female workers who become pregnant extra rights.

The working group worked out a compromise. It would not be morally correct for the House to unilaterally change a fundamental provision in a compromise hammered out between the social partners, which puts female workers at an advantage and employers at a disadvantage. Given that the legislation is supposed to reflect the hard fought and difficult compromise worked out over a long time by the working group, it should not be unilaterally changed in a dramatic way.

The difficulty from the employer's point of view is that the EU directive provides protection against dismissal of a female employee from the beginning to the end of maternity leave. The Government has amended the directive to extend it to cover paid maternity leave and an additional eight weeks unpaid maternity leave. If an employee falls ill while on unpaid maternity leave, she can opt to go on sick leave but, if at the end of sick leave, she still has unused additional maternity leave, great uncertainty will be created for the employer because he or she will not know how long the female employee will be out sick and there is still an issue relating to unused maternity leave. An employer could be stuck with an employee for years following protracted sick leave. The Unfair Dismissals Tribunal, the objectivity of which is not questioned by anybody, has decided in a number of cases that if somebody in normal employment falls ill and after a set period is unable to say when she can return, which depends on the conditions of employment, the employer is justified in terminating the employment and this is not an unfair dismissal.