Annie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

It is great to have the Minister of State in the House on this good news day and to see the extension. I hope people will take note of it and avail of the leave. Does he have any information on the uptake of parent’s leave and benefit and is there any data on that?

I was in Iceland a couple of years ago on a study trip to learn how Iceland had built one of the most gender-equal societies in the world. It has the smallest gender age gap and so on. We trundled around the place talking to politicians on the left and right, trade unionists, workers, women's groups and many other groups about how the country had achieved that over the preceding 20 years. The two measures we were told had led to it were parent's leave, in line with the good news here, and childcare having been made available from the age of two years, which is built into the education system. From the age of two, everyone has access to childcare because it is part of the education system. It was highlighted there is a gap between when parental leave ends, when the child is one, and the age of two, and the country is working on that. I was struck by how the people we talked to talked about parental leave as the reason they have the most gender-equal society. Iceland does parental leave a little differently from how we do it here, and I have spoken to a couple of people here about this and they cannot even imagine it. While we are here discussing parent's leave, I may as well discuss it here, and we might go on an imaginarium as to how it could look.

Iceland's parental leave is for one year plus a four-week period, and the one year has to be split evenly between the parents. It is a case of using it or losing it. There is six months for each parent. There are not a lot of lone parents in Iceland, so there are different structures there and there is a high incidence of divorce. We are imagining a slightly different society, therefore, but we will imagine it in any event. There is six months for each parent and that cannot be switched over. It is a policy of use it or lose it and there is a period of four weeks that can be used whichever way, which is often used for the birth parent, or the mother. This was introduced just over 20 years ago and everyone we spoke to said it has led to such a radical shift in society because both parents, from year 1, have to take equal responsibility for caring for the child. Parent's leave is going to be really important in contributing somewhat to that societal shift given that, very often, the birth parent takes the maternity leave or the majority of the time, and that sets off a tone or trend throughout that child's life. The people I spoke to in Iceland found that had shifted that trend whereby both parents had to be equally responsible in the first year of the child's life. Obviously, there have been issues with it. Not everyone has taken it up and there has been some reluctance, especially for higher earners because the gap is quite different from what they might get from the state, but as a general rule, it has become almost unacceptable that both parents would not, in the first year of the child's life, be responsible for him or her. This includes cases even where the family unit has broken down. Whatever the structure is, both parents are responsible for minding the child in the first year of his or her life, and that has been credited as one of the main drivers in building a gender-equal society. It shifts the paradigm in the context of who is the breadwinner and who is the carer, which continues, inevitably, throughout the child's life and the structure of the family unit.

I wanted to put that out as an example of how one society has found the provision of parental leave or the provision of care for children in the first year of their life, and the knock-on impact that has had, such as the reduction in the gender age gap and the promotion of how the society treats women. All of us who were there noted and commented on how things just felt a little different. The way people spoke to one another felt different and we saw an equal number of genders out and about during the workday with children. As I said, we spoke to people on the left, the right and otherwise and they all credited this with the change. It was only 22 years ago that Iceland introduced it - I was on the trip two years ago - and in 22 years, it managed to see an enormous societal shift. For me, parent's leave, parent's benefit and shared opportunities to care for children go societally far beyond being able to care for a child. They also have long-term benefits for what society looks like because when both parents are able to present and care for a child, it shifts that dynamic throughout the child's life, which has positive socioeconomic benefits for society. It is really great and I would love it to be extended ever further.