Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. It is great to see this Bill before us and I am delighted to support it. What we are looking at here is increasing the duration of parents' leave from two to five weeks' paid leave for parents of children under the age of one. It shows the Government's support to young families. I also welcome the support for same-sex couples to avail of adoptive leave.

The Minister also mentioned increasing the number of board members of Tusla from five to nine. Out of curiosity, I would be interested to know the gender balance there. I assume it will be a positive, balanced one. The Government is trying to reach 40% female participation across all its boards.

This is in our programme for Government and it is in budget 2021. It shows our commitment to supporting families, particularly during this special time in their lives. We are supporting both men and women and we are changing our working lives to make sure that we have a better work-life balance. It means that jobs are protected when parents take this leave. What it comes down to is that one will not lose one's job by taking leave that one needs to take.

As a member of the Joint Sub-Committee on Mental Health, I am conscious that well-being is so important and how, after a person has this life-changing moment of having a child or adopting a child, one should be given support by society to do the best that one can and have the time to do it, and to enjoy that special time. I am sure there is much recovery involved as well in trying to deal with something new. It is important, from a well-being and mental health point of view, that we are doing this.

It is also about reducing the gender pay gap, which Senator Bacik mentioned. I am looking forward to the seeing information that Senator Bacik referenced on the gender pay gap.

I am also my party's spokesperson on education and further and higher education. It is difficult at third level. There are so many who are in contract positions and when one is funded through an award of non-Exchequer funding, sometimes that does not include maternity leave. This is something crucial that we must look at. When the Minister spoke with us here on International Women's Day on Monday last, he talked through everything that is being done in a number of Departments to promote and encourage positive practices in the workplace that will encourage and support women, in particular. Of course, men too, but here I believe that it is the case that it negates against women.

We talked about teaching buyout, which Senator Bacik mentioned. Teaching buyout is something I am very interested in as well at third level to support women, in particular, doing research and how to focus their time doing research. I am speaking to this because I worked previously in NUI Galway. I would have known many people in the research area and I am sure that this applies to many different roles as well. How do we ensure, when people are taking leave and when they come back into work, that the key things they need to do to ensure their career progression are done?We also talk about leadership roles for women. That must also be looked at when they come back into work. When engaged in third level education, for example, one must be able to conduct research. If a people do not have research or peer-reviewed papers to their name, it will be harder for them to progress into professorship roles. This applies to many parts of business. A person may have been out of the loop, perhaps for a couple of weeks, and then suddenly, in pre-Covid times, that person was unable to go to a conference or his or her name was not down for it. In our businesses, we need to make sure diversity and equality practices within work are being maintained.

Finally, I support this Bill and that childcare be more balanced. My colleague, Senator Currie, spoke in detail about how childcare is not particularly just for one parent but is for both and that our cultural and societal norms will change. In introducing this Bill, the Minister is part of that changing of our societal and cultural norms. I hope it will happen swiftly. The Minister mentioned that it will be April 2021. I very much welcome it. My areas of interest are in how we support women when they come back into work. Perhaps, therefore, considerations around that too would be interesting.