Kathleen O'Meara (Labour)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House and apologise for not being present for the entire debate due to other commitments. I welcome this legislation as a move in the right direction for the extension of parental leave. This is a matter of the utmost importance to an increasing number of people. I am merely stating the obvious when I say that this country has undergone a transformation in respect of women's participation in the workforce. Approximately 50% of women are now participating in the workforce. As people in the workforce become parents, the issue of who minds the children becomes critical as does the issue of parental leave.

While this Bill extends the range of parental leave, it is to a minimal extent and does not go far enough. The needs of a child in the first year of life are critical. All parents, particularly mothers who have stayed in the home with children, recall the day when they must return to work following maternity leave. It can be one of the most difficult experiences. The parent wants to go back to the workforce but her mind is at home. It is a very difficult wrench to leave a very young baby when the parent has been the full-time carer. It is an extraordinary concept that parents hand over the almost full-time care of very young children to strangers in crèches. I congratulate all the minders and crèches and all those relatives, neighbours, friends, grannies and in-laws who do a magnificent job in caring for babies.

As a legislator and as a mother I ask the Government to examine the impact on family life of the lack of an infrastructure where parental leave is only one part of a planned and integrated approach to the care and education of young children. The Leader of the House is arranging a debate on the matter. There needs to be a significant extension of the right to parental leave. The Government should consider making it possible for parents to be the full-time carers of their infants up to the age of one year so that every child is cared for by its parent for the first year of its life. This will ensure an excellent head start in life for the child and will be of economic benefit to the State.

The welfare of children, particularly very young children, must be a priority. Many babies are being looked after in large crèches and are not being cared for on a one-to-one basis by the same carer. Experts in the field of early childhood development do not regard this as an ideal situation.

My eldest child is nearly 21 years old. It does not seem to have done him any harm when at the age of about one he went into a crèche and had more than one minder. In the first year of his life he had the benefit of a wonderful woman minding him full time. Experts in child development will attest to the importance of a child having a single carer and the best carer of a child is its parent. Priority must be afforded to infants. I ask the Government to examine the introduction of a system of parental leave available for the first year of the child's life.

Senator Cox made a point about family-friendly work policies. We want to achieve an infrastructure which supports all parents who work. Such infrastructure must include a family-friendly work environment. In Denmark the system is that the two parents work one and a half jobs, each parent working three quarters of a job. This allows the parents to spend time at home which both the child and the parents require in order to form the family unit which is the fundamental cornerstone of a properly-functioning society, a happy family and a happy community.

The impact of parents having very little time with their children must be considered. Some parents must leave home at 7 a.m. and may not see their children until 7 p.m. that evening. They may have worked all day and commuted home. I know from my own experience that both children and parents can be tired and only a small window of opportunity exists in which to spend time with each other. This is not a satisfactory quality of life for parents. It is then not surprising that many women opt to downsize in their job and opt for job-sharing or flexitime if possible. It is statistically borne out that in some cases women are leaving the workforce in order to have more time with their children because they cannot organise a flexible arrangement.

I have sympathy for the case of small employers as referred to by Senator Cox. I know a person who works in the public service outside Dublin. She praised the public service system of family-friendly work arrangements such as half-time and term-time working. Many parents, both men and women, avail of these arrangements. I asked her how the office work is managed when so many people are not in the office. She replied that they simply do not answer the telephone. The current approach is not working and I ask the Minister of State to examine it. The objective of family-friendly work policies is not to hammer the customer who needs to avail of a public service.

It is great if a large number of parents working for an employer take the summer off to care for their children. However, given that this significantly reduces the workforce for a short period, how is a small or medium-sized employer supposed to cope in terms of productivity and so forth? This difficulty must be taken into account. A partnership approach between the Government, IBEC and the employee bodies is required to produce strategies which work, not only for working parents but also for employers and the economy.

As studies carried out in other countries have shown, the availability of parental leave for the first year of a child's life makes economic sense. Women who are allowed to spend the first year of a child's life at home are more likely to return full time to the workforce, whereas when women are forced to leave the workforce it results in a major loss to the economy.

It is a rarely stated fact that one of the reasons for the wonderful economic expansion and prosperity of recent years is that one of our under-utilised resources, namely, educated women, have entered the workforce. As educated and less-educated women have joined the workforce, the economy has significantly expanded. It would be worthwhile to examine how we can support parents at work. Although employers recognise that this is an economic issue, it appears the Government does not view it likewise. Investment in child care under the equal opportunities programme has created much greater availability but it is minimal when compared to the amounts other countries invest in child care. It equates to less than the funding provided by Government to the horse racing industry.

We have a crisis in child care, with parents struggling to cope with its financial and emotional burden. What price are we paying for the difficulty families face in functioning, particularly from Monday to Friday when children go to school and after school arrangements are sometimes ad hoc? Parents rely on favours between neighbours, friends and so on which can come apart at short notice, causing major pressure and distress, particularly for those who commute. I know many people in this position.

While we have raced ahead and created a working economy, we have failed to ensure that a fundamental part of infrastructure, namely, the care and education of young children, matches economic progress. This is particularly the case in terms of the infrastructure required to support the many working parents who form a necessary part of the workforce.

The Minister is only one of seven Ministers who share responsibility for child care. We need a single Minister to assume responsibility for this area. In Britain, for instance, a separate infrastructure is being established to support working parents and meet the need for a high-quality system of care and education for young children. This is a recognition of the considerable evidence to show that a high-quality pre-school education system tackles disadvantage at its source. It is the only approach that will reduce our school drop-out rates which, despite economic prosperity and more investment in education and communities, are still stubbornly high in the post-primary sector. The reason for this is that the communities which badly need investment in the early years of children's lives are not receiving it. It would be worthwhile for the Government to target investment in full-time crèches and pre-school facilities in poorer areas. Someone told me this week that one year spent in a good quality pre-school facility with trained workers before primary school age yields five years at the other end. Children who benefit from this early head start are much more likely to successfully travel through the education system.

While I welcome this important legislation in principle, it is minimal and marks a small step forward when giant steps are needed.