Parental Leave Dail Éireann — 2022-05-17 ============================================================ Heather Humphreys (FG), Cavan-Monaghan From July 2022, parent's leave and benefit will increase from five weeks to seven weeks. I and the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, who has responsibility for policy in this area, will undertake to do a communications campaign at that time to make sure people are aware of it. This is an important support for parents and it is something we want people to take up. I am delighted there was such an increase in the numbers of people availing of the support in 2021. I hope that in 2022, that figure will grow further. Some 55,923 parents availed of the support in 2021, at a cost of over €50.8 million in total. That money is well spent because it gives parents the time to spend with their children. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2022-05-17/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:50:27+00:00 Sitting date: 2022-05-17