Margaret Cox (Fianna Fail)

I am pleased to contribute to the debate on the Parental Leave (Amendment) Bill. There are a couple of issues to which I wish to draw the attention of the Minister and his officials. As the Bill moves from Second Stage to Committee Stage perhaps we can deal with some of the difficulties caused by its implementation. I speak as a mother of four children and an owner-manager of a small business.

The Parental Leave (Amendment) Bill and the changing of the statutory entitlement to take the 14 weeks parental leave in separate blocks of a minimum of six continuous weeks will cause huge difficulty, in particular for small businesses. Small businesses in Ireland suffer from continual regulation being imposed on them by various Departments, particularly in the area of company law and finance. For a small organisation to lose an employee for six weeks gives it neither the opportunity to train a person to take over that person's job nor is it worthwhile to take on a temporary employee to cover parental leave. It then has to say "No" to an employee and postpone the leave, which cannot be postponed on a second request. We should try to facilitate people to take parental leave but we need to recognise — as does congress — that some organisations could live with 14 weeks parental leave in that they could take people on for two weeks before the commencement of the 14 week period, train them in and have cover for three or four months. That makes sense when one is taking on a person on a temporary contract. To balance that, it is difficult for people to take 14 weeks unpaid leave unless one's partner or spouse is in a well-paid job. For any family with young children, taking 14 weeks without pay is difficult. As a Government, we need to look seriously at the issue of paying parental leave benefit. We introduced carer's benefit to go with carer's leave and it has been successful. There is maternity leave and maternity payment. However, maternity payment goes nowhere near making up for the salary one might usually take home if one were not on maternity leave. We have to start somewhere.

If we are serious about our commitment to family we have to look at how we can support businesses in Ireland, particularly indigenous industry, to provide the leave and supports we want for the family and must examine how we can provide supports for employees. We need to consider paying some type of benefit to those on parental leave. Let us start at a low level and increase it over time so that in five or six years, we will have achieved a certain objective in terms of amounts of money. If we were in a position to do that we could say six weeks is too short for many small organisations. For smaller businesses, with fewer than 50 employees, to lose an employee for six weeks, three times in two years, is disruptive. If that business employs 50 people, it is contributing to all those families and it should benefit from some protection. While congress is strong on this issue and has fought hard on it, we need to send a clear message that enforcing six weeks leave as a right will create difficulties for smaller companies.

I am pleased the maximum age of eligible children is being raised from five to eight years. I welcome also the increase in the maximum age of the eligible child to 16 years in the case of children with disabilities. There are many good provisions in the Bill.

On the issue of force majeure leave, I ask the Minister to listen carefully. I also declare an interest. I wish to refer to recruitment agencies or employment agencies. The Minister will be aware I am an owner-manager of a recruitment agency in Galway. All recruitment agencies are faced with a problem. The legislation provides that force majeure leave is payable by the organisation liable for the wages of the temporary employee. Temporary employees are those employed in a contract of employment or a contract for employment. Is the agency liable to pay the wages or is the user company, as defined in the Unfair Dismissal Acts, liable to pay the wages? Obviously, if the temporary employee involved were not working in the organisation there would be no liability on the agency to pay the wages or the liability would rest with the user company. Until the legislation is tested, the position is unclear.

Let us say we choose either the agency or the user organisation. The nature of temporary work, particularly in the larger centres, is that temporary employees move from one assignment to the next and may work for various temp agencies during that time. One could spend two weeks with agency A and two weeks with agency B and so on. When I am with agency A I may start a two week assignment and on the second day I may apply for force majeure leave because of an emergency at home or wherever. Who will pay the force majeure leave, the agency or the employer organisation? If it is granted and paid by either organisation, where is the control to monitor what happens in two weeks time, when that individual moves to a different employment agency and to a different user company, where he or she can again apply for force majeure leave and take three days this time and so on, given that there is no central registration to record what payment has been made under force majeure leave? This leaves either the user organisation or the employment agency open to exploitation, which probably means that at the end of the day the temporary employee will not get the full benefit of his or her right, which is not what we want to do. I ask the Minister and his officials to focus on that section. While some changes are being made on codes of practice for force majeure, we need clarity. Employers, who use temporary employees, and temporary agencies need clarity on the issue of who is responsible for the payment in order that it can be included in the charging and, therefore, can be paid to the employee. We need a system to ensure people cannot go from one agency to another and so on and continue to claim force majeure which is beginning to happen. As people become aware of this facility, claims are being made weekly to many of the organisations.

In the whole equality area which goes back to the issue of continual regulation of organisations, if we are to be committed to family friendly policies and supporting women at work, we must recognise this carries an additional burden for small companies. Two people job-sharing in a small company is more expensive in terms of management than having one person doing the job. The provision of flexitime or mother-friendly working hours is much more difficult for a small organisation to deal with. It is important to tie these welcome and necessary legislative changes into the taxation system and the tax credits system. I suggest, for instance, a double tax credit on the salaries of two people who are job-sharing could be set against the employer's corporation tax as a form of recognition by the Government of the commitment of smaller organisations — and even big organisations — in this area. This type of support from Government would allow for a follow through into the operations of organisations and their acceptance of the need to move towards family-friendly policies.

I ask the Minister of State to consider the two areas which I have referred to before Committee Stage is dealt with. I ask him to suggest to the Minister for Finance the need to offer some form of financial support to the SME sector in order to implement these policies which we all wish for and which are of benefit to society.