Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats)
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114. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality if her Department has any means of monitoring the uptake of parental leave across all employment sectors; if so, the details of the uptake rates across sectors; and if she will provide the rates in relation to gender, socioeconomic profile and any other categories. [8733/17]

David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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As the Deputy will be aware, parental leave is unpaid. There is no reporting obligation on employers in the legislation, as it was considered that this would impose a disproportionate burden on employers, and consequently there is no central repository of statistics on take up.

Qualitative assessments of take up by gender and within different employments might best be obtained via the Quarterly National Household Survey undertaken by the Central Statistics Office or by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission as part of its statutory role of keeping the operation of relevant legislation under review as Ireland's Equality Body for EU law purposes, and I have asked my Department to explore these options.