Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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433. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs if there are plans to expand the force majeure leave scheme to allow parents to care for a child isolating due to Covid-19; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [41759/20]

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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The Government takes the needs of working parents very seriously, particularly the difficulties they are facing in the current pandemic. There have been a number of advances in respect of the leave available to working parents in recent years. The Parent’s Leave and Benefit Act 2019 introduced paid parent’s leave of two weeks for each parent to be taken in the first year of a child’s life or within the first year of placement with the family in the case of adoption. The Government intends to further extend parent’s leave and benefit to five weeks for each parent, to be taken until the child is two.  Work is being undertaken to develop legislation to provide for these changes. 

The Parental Leave (Amendment) Act 2019 further extended the availability of unpaid parental leave. As of 1 September 2020, each parent has an entitlement to 26 weeks which can be taken up to a child’s twelfth birthday.

Where a parent requires urgent leave from work, they may avail of force majeure leave which gives an employee a limited right to leave from work. Under the Parental Leave Acts 1998 and 2019, this leave is available where, for urgent family reasons, the immediate presence of the employee is required due to illness or injury of a close family member, including a child or adopted child. The maximum amount of leave available is three days in a 12-month period or five days in a 36-month period. There are no plans at present to extend force majeure leave.