Unpaid parental leave extended from 14 to 18 weeks
Published: Wednesday, March 13, 2013
On March 8th the Government announced its intentions to introduce the EU Parental Leave Directive into Irish law. Currently in Ireland maternity leave is paid for 26 weeks with an additional 16 weeks unpaid also being available. In addition to this, 14 weeks' unpaid parental leave is available for both mothers and fathers up until the child is aged 8 years. With the introduction of the Directive into Irish law, unpaid parental leave will be extended from 14 to 18 weeks for each parent.
Furthermore, the Directive provides that an employee returning to work from parental leave may request changes to their work hours and/or patterns for a set period of time. There is, however, no obligation on the employer to grant the request.
The take-up of Parental Leave in Ireland is extremely low by international standards. The main reasons for this is that it is unpaid, unlike many other countries which have different combinations of paid and unpaid leave. The NWCI have stated that the first year of a child's life is a crucial one and have called on the Government to incrementally introduce a paid element of parental leave so that parents, mothers and fathers, will have a real option of spending time with their babies. We see this in the context of balancing work life with care more fairly between mothers and fathers. We also said that there should be an obligation on employers to grant reasonable requests for flexible work arrangements.
The NWCI highlighted the current situation in relation to breastfeeding. The importance of breastfeeding and the social and health benefits to the child and the mother are huge. Currently the legislation allows for up to an hour each day for mothers who have given birth within the previous six months. We are calling on the Government to bring this period of time into line with practice in other countries and extend it up to at least one year. We also called for an obligation to be put on employers to provide basic facilities in the workplace to facilitate breastfeeding. At the moment no such obligation exists.
The case for extending flexible work practices is strengthened by the findings of a recent survey carried out by the NWCI, Start Strong, Barnardos and OPEN, which indicates widespread support among parents for stronger work-life balance measures – 1,213 parents took part in the survey. When asked about their ideal preference for childcare, the most popular preference at 36% was to have access to more flexible work practices such as reduced hours and term-time leave.
We joined with Start Strong, and ICTU to say that the family-friendly measures that are being proposed would be a modest first step towards the development of 'a system of safe, affordable and accessible child care in place, similar to what is found in the Scandinavian countries' as advocated by theMinister for Social Protection and Family Affairs, Joan Burton TD.