Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I am very interested in joining this conversation and very much welcome Ms Allen back to Leinster House. This is not just a question for the previous generation. I am slightly concerned that we all talk here about what the IMF, McKinsey and economic interests want and that we measure everything based on economic growth, as if that was the key measure of progress. There are other measures such as the nature of and other values in society. I have a terrible fear that everything we have done in recent years has perhaps accentuated the economic growth model rather than looking at other assessments. In addition, looking at the statistics, it does not seem that they necessarily match what people do. It is not a tiny minority who sometimes decide to work in the home but the very large bulk of Irish women and their connected parties.

We are all connected and a large bulk of Irish women and their partners seem to have been ignored and discriminated against in recent years. I would love to have heard the National Women's Council of Ireland representing their interests when, for example, in last year's budget they were pretty much ignored and given absolutely nothing, as if they did not count. It is on the back of previous years, where through individualisation and other measures, we have effectively stated to people, "Thou shalt get out to work, no matter what".

I have a fear that the witnesses cite Austria as an example. I had an interesting experience recently related to where this is coming from. Why is it that the European Union, the OECD, the International Monetary Fund and McKinsey and Company are espousing work all the time? It comes from central European countries where populations were declining and they were worried about migration. They had all sorts of different pressures and were worried their economy might sink as they got to full employment. Their answer was to get everyone working. It was official EU and OECD policy based on what was happening in Sweden, Germany and Austria because they had a falling population. All economic, labour and other market policies, coupled with a lack of support for caring, came from that driver. I must admit I am slightly disappointed or nervous to hear the women's council citing McKinsey, the €12 trillion value of economic growth and the International Monetary Fund, IMF, as the great signal of what we might want to do.

We must look after every woman in every circumstance and I am absolutely 100% in favour of equality in budgeting and ensuring we live in a truly equal society. We are leaving behind that massive cadre and restricting choice. We are having children older and later because everything is constrained by a person getting a job because the rent must be paid, or a house should be bought or the career must be maintained. It is all about economic growth. US Senator Elizabeth Warren brilliantly wrote about the two income trap, with people ending up in a really precarious position where they cannot afford not to work or get on the economic wheel. I am afraid that is what I heard today.