Ms Eilís Ní Chaithnía:

I return to my earlier point by referring to the national women's strategy. The National Women's Council of Ireland worked very closely with the Department of Justice and Equality in developing the national women's strategy. As I stated, the strategy is more of an action plan than a strategy as it was a compilation of commitments that had already been made by Departments with regard to women's equality, gender equality, the advancement of women, etc. That is what has been done to date under the strategy, which is fine because it is a live document. The National Women's Council also sits on the monitoring group for the national women's strategy. From our point of view, we are eager to see the commitments made in the strategy fulfilled. If that were to happen, it would make a significant difference to women's equality. The National Women's Council made a substantive submission to the consultation on the national women's strategy and our recommendations under each of the headings were probably more ambitious than what ended up being provided for in the strategy. I expect that is fairly standard regarding the types of recommendations that social justice and advocacy organisations make and the provisions that are agreed in the long term.

As I stated, I am reticent about being overly critical of this initial phase of-----