Margaret Cox (Fianna Fail)

It would be nice to have paid paternity leave. A cost of €6 million, rising to €10 million if all the men were to take it up, seems small in the context of the overall social welfare budget in which €1 of every €3 spent by the Government goes to social welfare benefit.

The real issue is the parental leave per child. The case for that is to allow the child be looked after in his or her home for the first year of his or her life. We should add 13 or 14 weeks with an element of pay to the 26 paid weeks' maternity leave. The first couple of months after the six months of paid benefit are not too expensive, but as time goes on and the child grows, it is difficult to choose to stay at home with no support from the State. The carer's leave and benefit provide a model for this benefit.

We have made many changes to parental leave in recent years, driven by Europe, but with an economy such as ours we should lead the field in the area of parental leave and care for children. This would make a statement about our country. We should not have to wait for EU directives but say we accept that it is better for a child to stay at home and that we want to facilitate parents and families in doing that by phasing in a benefit for unpaid parental leave. We cannot do everything at once but we need to set down a marker in this House that we have done so much and must look to future challenges.