Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to support this Bill. It is important that the Government is extending parental leave and adoptive leave for married same-sex couples and that we are supporting the work of Tusla by increasing the board membership. Having a child is the greatest life-changing thing that any of us can do and the riskiest and most ambitious thing that any of us can aspire to. I think it is important, as a republican, that every child has an equal opportunity for the best start in life.That we are supporting parents to try to give their children the best start in life is to be welcomed and I hope all parties will support it.

In the short term, once this Bill is passed, parents will be immediately able to avail of it over a two-year period - I appreciate and welcome it is being backdated - but in the longer term, we will see the benefits of this because it will start to change the dynamic and the way society thinks about who is doing the caring. I questioned the Minister on whether the care - the extended three weeks - could be given all to one parent and he explained that it is deliberately being given to both parents to deliberately enable both parents to avail of or lose it. That is a really positive intervention in terms of this legislation because it is only when one has had to mind a child for 12 or 24 hours, seven days a week, with the unpredictability, the entertainment and, honestly, the exhaustion that comes with it, that one gets an appreciation of what is involved in minding another human being. It can be the most rewarding, frustrating and exhausting experience but, truly, it is something that all of us as adults should be, I think, obliged to take on because if one can manage to look after a young child, take care of him or her, and ensure that the child is happy and healthy, one will have no greater reward in life.

I commend the Minister and the Government on delivering on this promise and I wish him well with the Bill.