10,303 signatures ask Ireland for eight weeks of paternity leave, while the State pays €299 a week for two

More than 10,000 people have signed a petition asking Ireland to lengthen statutory paternity leave from two weeks to eight, Limerick Voice reported on November 3, 2026. The count stood at 10,303, and Social Democrats councillor Shane Hickey-O'Mara had carried the request to Limerick City and County Council. The State pays a father €299 a week for those two weeks.

What the 10,303 names are asking for

The petition belongs to a campaign called 8 Weeks for Families, founded by Shane O'Connor, who runs a peer-support group for fathers in Cork called Lads2Dads. It asks for three things: eight weeks instead of two, a non-transferable entitlement for each father so that it is used, and the State benefit kept in place so that no family is priced out.

Mr O'Connor told the Irish Examiner on April 28, 2026 that the primary ask is eight weeks, but that the entitlement only becomes usable with earnings-related pay. "The real solution is eight weeks at 70 to 100% of salary, so that families aren’t choosing between being present and staying solvent," he said.

At 10,000 signatures the campaign says the petition will be formally presented to the Oireachtas (the Irish parliament), to Norma Foley, the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality, and to Dara Calleary, the Minister for Social Protection. None of the coverage we found dates that handover.

The growth is traceable. On June 18, 2026, Newstalk reported that some 3,000 people had signed, and Mr O'Connor said 70% of them were women, most of them mothers who had had caesarean births. A petition about fathers' time, then, was signed mostly by mothers.

Limerick Voice gives the councillor's motion a modest scope. Limerick Council wrote to both ministers, and Mr Hickey-O'Mara asked that the motion be circulated to all local authorities. He added that the issue should not be seen as tied to one party. "Dads need more time to support their partners and to bond with their children before returning to work," he said.

The signature count comes from a campaign, and no outside body has audited it. The campaign's own pages still say "nearly 2,000" families, a figure that predates the climb, so the 10,303 rests on Limerick Voice's report.

A flat €299 against a wage

Ireland's paternity leave is two weeks, taken in a single block within 26 weeks of the birth or adoption, and the campaign says it has not changed since it was introduced in 2016. The weekly State benefit is a flat rate.

The charity Movember published a report called Extra Time with Dad on June 16, 2026. The Irish Times reported that the €299 a week is a 74.5 per cent reduction on the average wage. Seven in 10 fathers who took leave reported financial strain.

Only 16 per cent of the fathers surveyed said they could have relied on the State payment alone. A further 68 per cent said that without employer top-ups they could not have taken leave at all.

Half of those who took leave thought that taking more would have put their career progression at risk.

Those figures come from a survey of 403 fathers with children aged ten or under, commissioned by Movember, a men's health charity that wants the Government to set up a Paternity Leave Working Group. It is a self-reported sample chosen by an advocate, and it says what these 403 fathers experienced, not what the average Irish father does.

A state-backed dataset points the same way. The Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission reported in April 2025, from a 10% sample of all births between 2019 and 2022, that only around half of fathers took paternity leave, against a quarter who took Parent's Leave and two-thirds of mothers. Higher-paid fathers, who are more likely to receive an employer top-up, were more likely to take it, and so were those in larger companies where a replacement is easier to find. The authors concluded that raising the State replacement rate would likely increase take-up by fathers. That last line is the one the arithmetic sets beside the petition. A father who can take two weeks only when his employer pays the difference has an entitlement that depends on his payroll.

What the research behind the ask can carry

The psychological case reached the press on October 27, 2026, in the Medical Independent, where Professor Sinéad McGilloway, founder director of the Centre for Mental Health and Community Research, wrote an opinion piece on paternity leave. It is a column drawing on other people's studies, not a new study.

She cites estimates that 10 per cent to 30 per cent of fathers may experience symptoms of depression and anxiety after a birth, and says that fewer than 5 per cent seek help from a GP or a mental health professional. Many, she writes, are "suffering in silence".

She also points to a 2020 study of almost 450 Canadian mothers, which found that greater paternal involvement was associated with lower maternal depression and parenting stress. "Associated with" is the study's own claim and the correct reading: the design shows a link, and the column does not say it shows that a longer leave caused the difference.

The column leans on Movember's report for the leave itself. It says one in four new fathers in that survey reported fair to poor physical and mental health in the first year, and that those who took longer periods of leave had better mental health and stronger bonding with their child. Both the survey and the column come from sides that favour longer leave. That does not make the numbers wrong, only untested by anyone who disagrees.

The campaign goes further. Its page says that "research shows 6+ weeks is where the developmental and mental-health benefits become significant" and names no study for the threshold, so the choice of eight weeks is a political ask, not a measured optimum.

What the gap does at home

The Irish Examiner's April feature adds one household in place of a sample. Daniel Gleeson, a business analyst in Galway, was entitled to two weeks like every father, and his son was born seven weeks early in 2024. He deferred the leave until the baby came home from neonatal care. His employer topped up his paternity benefit to full pay, but parental benefit is capped, so he could afford to use only a small portion of his further entitlement. When he went back to work, he said, a knowledge gap opened between him and his wife, and she took on more responsibility for their son's care, a pattern that continued while both worked.

He linked this to the mismatch between the two kinds of leave. "It basically all stems back from that gap between paternity and maternity leave," he said. One father's account proves nothing about the average, and the Examiner offers it as a case, not as a measurement.

It does show where the petition's argument about equal sharing of childcare would have to be tested. A mother who takes months and a father who takes two weeks come back to the household holding different amounts of information about the child. The mental load that follows is an unpaid bill, and it tends to be settled by the same person.

The ESRI report adds a detail on attitudes. A survey experiment it ran found high levels of support for covering fathers' full earnings during leave and for ring-fencing part of child-related leave for fathers only. That is public opinion, not law, but it is the model the petition asks for.

The comparison table, and the nearest neighbour

The campaign's comparison table lists Spain at 19 weeks at full pay, Norway at 15 to 19 weeks at 80 to 100 per cent of salary, Sweden with 90 days earmarked for each parent, and Iceland at six months at 80 per cent. The Irish Examiner put Spain at 16 weeks, so even the benchmark country carries a three-week discrepancy between the campaign and the newspaper that reported on it.

Professor McGilloway uses another benchmark: an EU average of 8.5 weeks, against Ireland's two. The Irish Times, reporting Movember, says two weeks is the minimum required by EU law and puts Ireland fifth from bottom in the Union for supported leave for new fathers, with Estonia just above at four weeks.

British readers can set the Irish figure beside their own. GOV.UK gives employees one or two weeks of paternity leave and a statutory weekly pay of £194.32, or 90% of average weekly earnings if that is lower.

The two countries differ on pay design more than on weeks. Ireland pays a flat sum, while Britain pays the lower of a flat sum and 90% of earnings, and both give one or two weeks at most. A University of Bath report puts a price on redesigning UK parental leave, and a psychologist's case for paternity leave sets Germany's planned months for fathers and mothers side by side.

Who has to answer the motion

The petition has no legal force, and Limerick Voice reports only that Limerick Council has written to the two ministers. The motion asks them to act, and neither minister is quoted in the coverage we found.

Mr Hickey-O'Mara, speaking for an opposition party, said he cannot change the rule himself and hoped that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael were listening. He also cited Tánaiste Simon Harris as having recently exemplified that Irish fathers get two weeks, far behind the European average.

The next dated step is the one the campaign has already promised: presentation to the Oireachtas and the two ministers now that the count is past 10,000. Movember's separate call, for a working group on length, payment rates and workplace culture, was made on June 16, 2026, and no source we read reports an answer.

Sources

• Extend Paternity Leave in Ireland: The 8 Weeks Petition and Press Kit, 8 Weeks for Families
• New IHREC and ESRI report finds only half of fathers avail of Paternity Leave, ESRI, April 2025
• Paternity pay and leave: Pay, GOV.UK