Sheila Terry (Fine Gael)

I move amendment No. 2:

In page 3, between lines 23 and 24, to insert the following:

"(2) The Minister shall, within three months of the enactment of this Act, cause a Report to be laid before each House of the Oireachtas examining the feasibility of increasing the parental leave entitlement from 14 weeks to 25 weeks.".

This amendment requests the Minister to consider increasing the parental leave period from 14 weeks to 25 weeks and to lay a report before the Houses of the Oireachtas. In light of what I have said already, parental leave, while extremely welcome to those who can afford to take it, is not adequate considering it covers eight years of a child's life. I am being moderate in my request to have it increased from 14 weeks to 25 weeks and all I am asking is that the Minister lay a report before us to allow us to examine that possibility.

We continue to put pressure on families by encouraging parents back into the workforce. In recent years families have contributed greatly to today's wonderful economy. However, up to now we did not consider the type of pressure this puts on families. Gone are the days when the man of the house went out to work and the wife stayed at home looking after the children and the house, which gave considerable stability to the working person. That stability no longer exists for the majority of families and we need to introduce structures to try to support them given the pressures they now experience. Asking that parents be allowed to avail of parental leave of up to 25 weeks is not an unfair request. I can imagine I will receive the same response from the Minister of State as I got to the previous amendment and similar to the responses we got last week. As far as I am concerned they are not family friendly policies and do nothing to address the pressures families experience today.