Work Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Bill 2022: Committee Stage (Resumed)
Seanad Éireann — 2023-02-15
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Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland

I am again surprised at the lack of willingness to take on constructive proposals. While the Minister may choose to understand that these documents are included, employers will not be experts on the foster care system, care orders and so forth. The concern is not that the list needs to be exhaustive. We have already spoken about the concerns regarding people who may not in fact be acting in loco parentis and may not be covered by that definition in another part of the Bill. Rather than putting it on employers, who may not know anything about foster care or the system, to figure out if a care order is a legitimate document, why not specifically list care orders when they are a document likely to be used by those providing foster care, who we expect to be able to use the provisions of this Bill based on our debate the previous day? Why not make life easier for both the employer and the employee seeking to activate this provision by mentioning something that we know is likely to be used rather than leaving it for an employer to interpret the provision, an employer who might argue that such an order is not a birth certificate, which may cause needless stress at what is likely to be a stressful time for those involved? I just do not understand why we do not include it.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2023-02-15/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:34+00:00
Sitting date: 2023-02-15