
Share
10th June 2019
07:49am BST

Ó Fearghaíl added that adoptive leave will be facilitated, but that the constitution prevents remote voting so politicians must still attend the Dáil chamber.
He said that the changes, as well as the prevalence of gender quotas, should encourage more women to run in elections.
"If you’re not getting the numbers in the normal way you need to take extraordinary temporary steps to ensure you get participation," he said.
This comes after the Green Party's Catherine Martin raised the issued last year, stating that the chambers needed to be a "breastfeeding-friendly workplace."
“Given the restrictions on non-members entering the Seanad or the Dáil, I believe that the Oireachtas should have a policy in place to assure any woman TD or Senator that she can breastfeed in the chamber," she wrote in a letter last March.
“The reasons behind a reluctance to breastfeed in our society are rooted in cultural choices across generations.”
Ó Fearghaíl agreed at the time and said that the Oireactas would develop a new policy to allow female TDs to breastfeed.