A win for working parents and for work-life balance.
As of August 2022, parents of newborns in Ireland will all be given seven weeks’ paid leave. And come August 2024, this will increase to nine weeks.
According to
The Irish Times, the changes in paid leave for new parents come into force as European Union rules are setting out to improve the work-life balance of workers across the EU member states.
As it stands today, parents' leave entitles each parent to five weeks’ leave during the first two years of a child’s life.
However, recently, the Government of Ireland has committed to extend the entitlement in two phases out to 2024 under the EU Work-Life Balance Directive.
Parents availing of the leave can also claim parent’s benefit of €245 a week, provided they have adequate social insurance (PRSI) contributions.
A measure “to address under-representation of women in employment
Back in April of this year, Irish parents’ benefit was extended from two weeks to five weeks in April 2021, a change set in motion by Tánaiste Leo Varadkar in 2016.
The full-year cost of extending the benefit from five weeks to seven weeks, estimated at €14.6 million, was detailed in the Department of Finance’s tax strategy papers.
The department noted that the EU directive on work-life balance was part of a package of measures “to address under-representation of women in employment, and to support their career progression through improved conditions to reconcile their working and private duties.”
