Covid-19 Pandemic Supports
Dail Éireann — 2021-09-15
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Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (SF), Cork South-Central

That is all true and I am sure it is fine and so on, but the Tánaiste will recognise that he did not address all the issues I identified. Many employers are great and will work with employees; we are not discussing those employers or the need for legal obligations to ensure they will continue to be reasonable. If they are going to be reasonable, that is fine. We are talking about employers that are not going to be reasonable. They are the minority - there is no question about that - but there is a minority that will not be reasonable.
The Tánaiste mentioned close contacts and the changes that have taken place in that regard.
There is no proposal to vaccinate children, in particular primary school children, at this point in time. We will still be dealing with a situation where they have to self isolate. Their close contacts - their parents - do not qualify for the enhanced illness benefit. They will still be in a position where they will have to stay home and probably take time off. We talk about working from home, but if you have a primary school child of seven years of age or five years of age and an infant as well, there is not a hope of any work being done, realistically. Over the course of the last year, we have been raising this issue as essential to supporting parents and to ensure they are able to work with the reopening of schools. There is still no action on it. The obvious route is the expansion of force majeure leave. Has the Tánaiste considered that?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2021-09-15/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:34+00:00
Sitting date: 2021-09-15