David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

When we were last here I gave an undertaking to progress the Bill in Government time, reflecting the Government's support for the aims of the Bill. Increasing choices for working parents and helping to provide them with the opportunity to spend more time with their children is a worthwhile aim, and we all share it. However, Senators will appreciate that the development of policy in this area is not straightforward and that the legislation is more complex than people realise. On Committee Stage I outlined a number of amendments the Government would be bringing forward on Report Stage. While those amendments initially appeared to be straightforward, the Senators will accept that in reality this is seldom the case, indeed, those amendments proved to be a lot more complex than anticipated.

The amendments are intended to balance the respective needs of parents and employers. As the House is aware, the Bill seeks to expand the current parental leave allocation from 18 weeks to 26 weeks. Doing so would place a financial and administrative burden on employers. On Committee Stage I outlined that if only 10% of eligible parents in the public sector were to take the leave in the health and education sectors it would amount to a cost of approximately €1.2 million. A 100% take-up would cost the Exchequer in excess of €12.4 million. Senators will recall that these figures do not include costs arising from An Garda Síochána, the Irish Prison Service, the Defence Forces, customer facing units or the public service, including the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection and the Revenue Commissioners. Neither do these figures take into account the loss of productivity or the loss of trained and experienced staff members from back offices. When the extra eight weeks are added to existing provisions, namely, maternity leave, paternity leave and carer's leave, and existing parental leave entitlements, the impact becomes greater on employers. The Office of the Attorney General has highlighted the issue of the cumulative burden on employers and the risk of unconstitutionality. We therefore have to ensure that the burden on employers is not disproportionate.

To address these concerns, the Government is proposing that the additional entitlements arising under this Bill will be phased in over two years. This is intended to give private and public sector employers time to adjust to the new leave regime. At the same time it will ensure that it will come on stream for parents from 1 December 2019. I will discuss this phased approach in more detail shortly when we come to the relevant amendment.

I must also mention that the work that my Department is undertaking in respect of other strands of family leave policy recognises that helping working parents to have more flexibility and greater choice in how they balance their professional and family lives has positive benefits for families and societies as a whole. In this context, A Programme for a Partnership Government includes a commitment to increase paid parental leave during the first year of a child's life as the research shows that children benefit most from parental care at this stage of development. Senators will recall that I recently joined with the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Flanagan, and the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Deputy Regina Doherty, to secure Government approval to draft legislation to implement that commitment and to introduce a new paid parental leave scheme later this year. This scheme will provide a paid parental leave entitlement for each parent of a child under one, whether employed or self-employed. Leave will initially be set at two weeks, and it is the Government's intention to increase the period of leave on a phased basis up to seven weeks over the next three years. This leave is in addition to the existing maternity, paternity and adoptive leave entitlements and will provide working parents with further opportunities to spend more time with their baby in its first crucial year of development.

I propose to take amendment No. 1 on its own as it involves an amendment of section 2 of the 1998 Act. The first amendment is straightforward; it updates the Bill to update the 1998 Act to insert the definition of a "specified day" and a "specified Act". The term "specified day" is required throughout the Act to ensure that when the Act commences on the specified day parents will be able to apply to take their entitlement to additional parental leave from the date the Act is commenced. The term "specified Act" is required to ensure that parents who did not use their full entitlement to leave under the 1998 Act, as amendment in 2013, will be able to claim any unused leave if that child is still under the new qualifying age of 12 years.