Vol. 576 No. 1
106 Mr. Eamon Ryan asked the Minister for Social and Family Affairs the views within her Department on the findings of the OECD report making international comparisons with the difficulties experienced by working mothers in Ireland, in particular those felt by working mothers running single parent families. [29022/03]
Ireland has participated in an OECD review of family friendly policies with a number of other OECD member states. Austria and Japan were the other countries reviewed with Ireland in the latest phase of the project. The review, which is part of a series entitled "Babies and Bosses" analyses how the existing mix of policies, including tax and benefit policies, child care policy and employment and workplace practices, contributes to different parental labour market outcomes and other societal outcomes. Demographic trends, in particular the growing participation of women in the labour market and changes in the structure of families, means that most people will combine work with caring for children, those with an illness or disability, or older family members at some stage in their working lives.
The OECD report makes specific policy recommendations for Ireland which include introduction of an entitlement to part-time work for parents with very young children, measures to facilitate lone parents take up full-time employment thus avoiding long-term dependency on one parent family payment, encouragement for employers and unions to make workplace more family-friendly and good quality child care services.
Responses to many of these policy recommendations are already in train. I recently established the Family Support Agency to further strengthen the institutional framework for the development of effective and responsive family support services. One of the functions of the Family Support Agency is to promote and disseminate information about a range of family related issues including information to assist persons in balancing their work and family life.
