Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to hear such a focus in so many of the contributions on the employment rights of women. I sincerely hope we can continue in that vein by focusing on several issues raised today. Senator Bacik referred to the gender pay gap and Senator Ward spoke about maternity leave arrangements for councillors. I want to support the call by Senator Gavan for a debate on the terms, conditions and rights of those who went out to work every day to ensure we were kept safe in our homes at the height of the Covid-19 crisis. I refer in particular to many people in the health sector, where there is such a high concentration of women workers, in the retail sector and in many of the other essential services in this country.

There is a wider issue to be discussed as well. I refer to the challenges facing working mothers in the weeks and months to come. It has already been mentioned in respect of the parents of newborns, and in particular the mothers of newborns, and the challenge they face going back to work. I have stood with the Extend Maternity Leave 2020 campaign and the National Women's Council of Ireland to call for an extension of maternity leave. We have been standing with that group for many weeks, and I am heartened to hear so many Government Senators, and in particular those from Fianna Fáil, support that call. I ask them to exert their influence with the Taoiseach, their party leader, to implement that initiative and include it in the July stimulus in the next two weeks. Let us not kick this can down the road into the Covid-19 committee, because time is not on the side of these women. Many of these families cannot access childcare, because those facilities have not been opened and they are not taking in young babies in the coming months as they try to settle into their new arrangements.Let us not kick the can down the road. Let us try to implement it over the next number of weeks.

There is a wider issue with working parents, and Senator O'Loughlin mentioned this in regard to the return to school, which is how we support them when kids go back to school and if schools have to shut down because of an outbreak or if a blended learning approach is going to be taken. I ask the Leader to bring the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation and the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs to this House so that we can discuss these issues.