Community
Shared Leave Needs to Happen
The report goes to Tynwald next month.
A report on the island’s population imbalance is recommending that shared parental leave should be introduced asap.
The select committee of Tynwald on Population Rebalancing 2022-23 is due to go before Tynwald in February.
The committee was set up following a motion by Paul Craine MLC, to explore what can be done to address the island’s population imbalance.
Chaired by Rushen MHK Dr Michelle Haywood, the committee’s sixth recommendation is that ‘shared parental leave should be introduced at the earliest opportunity’.
Looking at why couple are choosing not to have children, a survey created by the committee found that the majority of responses cited costs and lack of affordable housing.
The report says: ‘One respondent revealed
…we can’t afford a house, let alone to raise children, we are considering leaving the island as a result.
‘Another said, that:
….we made the decision not to have a second child, because of the cost of childcare. We need to buy a house, and childcare is the price of a mortgage. We had to choose between having a sibling for our daughter, or, having an asset for our family.’
Additionally, throughout the survey there were comments calling for reform of employment legislation, especially maternity and paternity leave, ‘with consensus that shared parental leave should be introduced expediently’.
It added: ‘A key concern was paternity at just two weeks in length, which was unanimously considered as wholly insufficient, and particularly so with the care implications of a C-section procedure, for example.’
