Fiona O'Loughlin (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is very welcome to the Chamber. At the outset, I thank him for giving us his time yesterday for an update regarding the legislation. It was certainly very welcome.

I welcome this legislation as a step forward in offering help to families in terms of balancing work and family life. As we know, this legislation extends parent's leave and benefit from two weeks to five weeks for each parent and, of course, takes on board other circumstances where there may be another co-parent, or indeed, two co-parents within a situation.

It extends the period in which leave can be taken from the first year of a child's life to the first two years, dating back to 1 November 2018. I know many of us have received correspondence and emails over the last ten months, particularly from young mothers who really felt they needed the opportunity to have some extra time. None of us can consider the last 12 months as any type of normal time.

As we know, this leave is non-transferable. It is aimed at supporting working families with additional leave at an incredibly busy time for everybody involved. It is also important to note that it is there to encourage parents to share the childcare burden and ensure that dads also get to spend time with their newborn children in the crucial early years.

It is really important to note that included in the proposals are amendments to the adoptive leave legislation, which address the present anomaly whereby married male same-sex couples are excluded from the leave. I thank the Minister for his work in that regard. In terms of equality, we must absolutely make sure that everything is equality proofed.

It is particularly timely that we are discussing this today, having just marked International Women's Day on Monday and having had the opportunity to spend two hours in the Chamber speaking about the impact Covid-19 has had on women. There is no doubt that it has had a disproportionate and profound impact on women, particularly in the areas of work and care. It has most certainly exacerbated many existing inequalities in society, including inequality that disadvantages women. The assumption that the majority of the childcare burden falls on the mother has held women back for far too long. We are facing a situation, although it has been rectified at this moment, where our Minister for Justice had no legal access to maternity leave. However, we spent last Monday telling women that they can achieve their dreams if they get up, dress up and show up etc. It is, therefore, really important that we are looking at this now. It is important to note that we cannot just utter those platitudes once a year and then leave women to shoulder a disproportionate caring role for the other 364 days of the year.In April 2020, a CSO survey found that 22% of women, compared with 15% of men, are caring for a dependent family member or friend and have increased childcare because of the Covid-19 pandemic. CSO data published in February 2021 showed 46.9% of female respondents reported low overall life satisfaction, which was over 10% higher than the male rate, which was 36.2%. There is an urgent need to match our policies to the reality of people's lives. Further work on developing family leave options will encourage greater sharing of the care load and will assist with addressing the assumptions that women are always the primary caregiver.

As I mentioned earlier, it is important that this law will also give leave to male same-sex couples who previously had been excluded from this benefit. LGBT Ireland has been vocal in calling for this amendment to be made because excluding a section of citizens in society is completely intolerable. I am glad to see the situation finally being rectified to reflect the diverse society in Ireland in 2021.

I agree with the comments that have been made about the financial aspects of this leave and the fact that we need to do more for lone parents who are raising their children. However, all in all, I think it is a good, progressive Bill and I commend the Minister's work on it.