Parental Leave
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17
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Norma Foley (FF), Kerry

Programme for Government - Securing Ireland's Future commits to examining the extension of parent's leave and benefit and additional flexibilities. The first action plan under the new national strategy for women and girls, published in August, includes measures to support working families in balancing work and family responsibilities, including extending parent's leave. The Department is taking forward work to implement that measure and to look at and examine it.
The programme for Government also commits to introducing pay-related parent's benefit and exploring other payments where a similar model could be applied. A pay-related model was introduced on 31 March 2025 for jobseeker’s benefit. The Department of Social Protection will draw on the learnings from that scheme to inform the development of options for parent's benefit and other family leave schemes.
There is a programme for Government commitment to examining the extension of parent's leave and benefit and additional flexibilities. Work on that is under way. Work is ongoing in the Department of Social Protection on pay-related parent's benefit.

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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/2026-09-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-17