Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 3 November 2004
83 Ms B. Moynihan-Cronin asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform if his attention has been drawn to the recent report from the OECD recommending that parental leave should be extended to one year after the birth of the child; if he intends to act on the recommendations; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27276/04]
View answerI understand that the Deputy is referring to the July 2004 OECD Thematic Review of Early Childhood Education and Care Policy in Ireland in which it is suggested that parental leave here be extended to one year after the birth of a child. The Government recognises the need to provide support to working parents after the birth or adoption of a child and has already made a number of significant improvements to our legislation to ensure this. The Maternity Protection (Amendment) Act 2004, which was commenced on 18 October last, makes provision for a working mother to take up to 16 weeks of her 18 week maternity leave entitlement after the birth. Added to this, she has the option of taking up to eight weeks' additional unpaid maternity leave. Similarly, adopting mothers may take 14 weeks' adoptive leave after placement and up to eight weeks' additional unpaid adoptive leave. On 22 October last, I made an order, S.I. No. 667 of 2004, increasing the adoptive leave entitlement by a further two weeks to 16 weeks with effect from 19 November 2004. In addition to maternity and adoptive leave, the Parental Leave Act 1998 provides an entitlement for both parents to 14 weeks' unpaid leave from work to take care of children up to the age of five years. The provisions of the maternity, adoptive and parental leave legislation combined offer working parents the option of taking up to 12 months' leave from work following the birth or placement of a child.
The Government is committed as part of the Sustaining Progress partnership agreement to strengthen the parental leave scheme in accordance with the recommendations agreed in the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness Report of the Working Group on the Review and Improvement of the Parental Leave Act 1998. In this regard, on 8 September last, the Government approved the general scheme of a Bill for priority drafting. The main provisions of the Bill, which will be published during the current Dáil session, will include the following: a statutory entitlement to take the 14 weeks' parental leave in separate blocks; raising the maximum age of the eligible child from five to eight years; an increase in the maximum age of the eligible child to 16 years in the case of children with disabilities; and extension of parental leave entitlements to persons acting in loco parentis in respect of an eligible child.
The Parental Leave Working Group considered a proposal to increase the duration of parental leave. However, no agreement was reached on this issue and the Government has no plans to make provision for an extension of parental leave.
