Justine McCarthy: Paternity leave shouldn’t be a privilege that only the likes of Simon Harris can afford

Simon Harris has left the stage. He has gone home to Greystones to spend time with his new baby daughter, born this day last week. The lights have not guttered and died in the Department of Finance, nor have the screaming and shrieking abated in Leinster House. It’s business as usual in Merrion Street. The world has not – so far – slammed to a standstill without the three-hatted Tánaiste, Minister and Fine Gael leader.Never has so senior a Government member upped and left the ship of state to go on paternity leave. Harris delivered his budget speech on Tuesday and did his morning-after media appearance on Wednesday. Then he went home to help mind the children. More power to his ambitious elbow. This is his third fatherhood break. The first two times, he was lower down the Cabinet pecking order, holding briefs in health and higher education respectively. This time, he has gone awl (absent with leave) smack in the middle of Ireland’s EU presidency and just as he is poised to take over from Micheál Martin as taoiseach next year.Everyone is dispensable. The world is beset with wars, plagues, floods, droughts and a litre of diesel costing more than €2, but Harris’s furlough has been reported in the media as meriting little more than an aside. As incidental as Michael Healy-Rae’s cap or Mary Lou McDonald’s new fringe. What a contrast with the extensive coverage not so long ago, when Helen McEntee, then the minister for justice, and Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns first took maternity leave. As Fine Gael’s deputy leader, McEntee becomes her party’s de facto leader now, a move which, like Cairns’ current maternity leave, has proved unremarkable. Hip-hip-hooray for that too.READ MORESeeing is normalising. When high-vis fathers avail of the €299-a-week statutory leave they are entitled to, going up to €309 from January, their children are not the only beneficiaries. Mothers gain too, along with the rest of society. Fathers are active parents these days. You see them on the school run, in the playground, at the supermarket checkout and on the playing field; rugby and soccer stars scooping up their offspring to share their triumphs in the Aviva Stadium. Unfortunately, fatherhood is not so visible in the workplace where patriarchal conventions persist. A man dashing from the office to be with his sick child still risks being noted by some bosses as lacking ambition and commitment to the job.In a time when the dingbat twin doctrines of Stepford wives and macho misogyny have taken hold, the example Harris is giving is to be applauded. It certainly beats JD Vance’s suggestion to give parents extra voting rights and his draft proposal to reward married couples by paying them if one spouse stays at home to rear the children. In most cases, that would be the mother, seeing as women are paid roughly 15 per cent less than men in the US. Research shows that, in Ireland as elsewhere, the gender pay gap often starts when women have babies. In crude productivity terms, creating a workplace that is family-friendly for fathers makes economic sense. An acceptance that co-parents’ child-rearing concerns need to be better balanced has a potential spin-off effect as an antidote to declining birth rates.[ Séamas O’Reilly: Am I a soft, overprotective dad bringing his own childhood traumas to bear?Opens in new window ]Harris went off home this week without including in the budget any extension to the State’s miserly two-week paternity leave. By that calculation, he is due back at his desk by October 21st. Hardly enough time to get through a pack of Pampers. In Japan, fathers are entitled to a year off with two-thirds fully paid. Iceland allows six months’ leave. It’s 19 weeks in Spain.Harris, of course, could avail of parental leave, which allows 26 weeks off for each child up to their 12th birthday but, as that is entirely unpaid, the optics would be fireworks for a politician on a €236,427 basic salary – more than quadruple the average Irish pay.Paternity leave payments are based on a flat rate rather than on a percentage of salary and, it seems, many fathers cannot afford to take a cut in pay. A study last year by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission in conjunction with the Economic and Social Research Institute found that only about half of fathers avail of paternity leave. Compared to two-thirds of mothers, just a quarter of fathers take parental leave, the nine-week paid entitlement. The report said that higher-paid fathers were more likely to take paternity leave because their employers were disposed to topping up the State payment.[ Don’t be a ‘permissive parent’, warns an expert with decades of experience helping familiesOpens in new window ]Setting an example, therefore, is not enough without making it viable for other parents. Fine Gael seemed to accept this when Garret Ahearn, one of its senators, said last year that the party wanted “to see the amount of benefit received linked to earnings, so families don’t feel financial pressure when parents’ leave is needed”. Oddly, nobody is substituting for Harris as minister for finance in his absence. Nor is McEntee expected to officially assume the temporary role of tánaiste. This is especially odd as, when she took maternity leave for the birth of her second child in December 2022, Harris was the one who stood in for her as acting minister for justice. With no stand-in arrangement in place, are we to assume the Tánaiste remains available to work if needed? If that is so, is he on leave? Or is he on call?Imagine what might have happened if Jacinda Ardern had not been substituted by her deputy, Winston Peters, when she was on six-weeks’ maternity leave from running New Zealand as its prime minister in 2018. “Hold on two ticks,” she might have told the midwife in the throes of giving birth. “I have to take this call – my country needs me.”Leading by example is all well and good, but the Tánaiste’s absence from the office for a fortnight is not going to trigger a rush to the door by new fathers throughout the land. Paternity leave needs to be viable for fathers. Perhaps Harris could get to work on that for next year’s budget, when he will be taoiseach.