Mary White (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The greatest challenge facing the country is to create employment and offer hope and a potential living to the 300,000 unemployed people and the young people in our schools and colleges. The only way we can create jobs is to encourage new enterprise. The biggest untapped source of enterprise is the 50% of the population comprising Irish woman who face multiple barriers in becoming entrepreneurs and developing businesses. At present two and a half times more men start up a business than women in Ireland. The bottom line is the responsibility for raising young children rests almost entirely with women.

My contribution to easing the barriers is to allow fathers share the responsibility of maternity leave. The Parental Leave Bill I will introduce in Seanad Éireann this evening proposes the father of a newborn baby can share the 26 weeks of maternity leave. This innovative legislation provides for the current maternity leave scheme to be amended to enable a woman transfer a proportion of her maternity leave and benefits to the father of the newborn baby. This flexibility in the maternity leave scheme would allow women entrepreneurs to devote more time to their enterprises, grow their businesses and create more jobs. The Parental Leave Bill 2013 is one of a series of innovative initiatives contained in a new Fianna Fáil policy paper-----