Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank our guests. It has been a very enlightening and provocative session. I would like to hone in on a few areas. The global point is that Covid has seriously exacerbated an already existing gender inequality. I will deal first with women's participation in the workplace. It is very clear that women are the greatest victims of displacement as the kind of jobs they are in, outside the front-line healthcare area, tend to be less well-paid and there is an in-built discrimination in areas like hospitality, which are the areas that have lost out. Women have been displaced in employment right across the world, no less here than elsewhere. It is a huge issue. I would be interested to hear the witnesses' comments on what can be done. There are two areas, the developing world and areas of conflict, and the more developed world, and the challenge is obviously greater in the former. What would their comments be about retraining, education and long-term education? There will be an issue. One need not be an expert in economics to assume that quite a few of these jobs will not return in the medium term, so we will have a deficit and a spin-off. Therefore, there is a need for retraining, for re-education and for new opportunities. Perhaps the witnesses can comment around this, in particular how we might label our overseas development aid and demand that kind of thing in the developing world. Can we also be in any way prescriptive in our own area? Overall, women's participation in the workplace is a key issue.

Second, as all in this forum know, education is very important. The witnesses gave us a very stark figure that 90,000 young female Syrian refugees did not participate in school or education last year. That is a shocking statistic but I know it is only indicative and that it is repeated elsewhere. I am inclined to be solutions-focused and we want to be solutions-focused in the way we do our committee work in that we want to make recommendations and ultimately effect change. There is no difficulty or disagreement between us around the aims, objectives or ambitions and we are ad idemon that. It is a question of how to resolve it. Do the witnesses have suggestions as to how we could re-focus our overseas aid, make new demands or apply new criteria? Is there much we can actively do to correct a wrong such as that cited in Jordan, and I know such wrongs are repeated all over the place? Education is a huge issue.

I want to turn to the issue of domestic violence. We are all getting anecdotal evidence around domestic violence. It is a horrendous crime and a wrong that is with us perpetually, but it is clearly exacerbated by the Covid situation, with people being at home together and all that goes with that. It is a real issue. Without seeking to be parochial, in my own county, in Cavan town, we need a women's refuge. The ideal would be that we did not need these things in the first instance but, sadly, we do. We do not have one there and the nearest women's refuge is in Dundalk, so even in the developed western world, there is a clear need to tackle this question head-on. When I attend policing committees, as all Oireachtas Members do at a local level, I am constantly getting statistics regarding an increase in domestic violence. If it is bad here, it is clearly worse in many of the areas the witnesses are dealing with. I am not sure if the witnesses can be prescriptive in this area as to what we might do. We must unequivocally condemn this and we must be of one voice on that, needless to say. However, how can we practically impact on the situation? We can feel powerless in the face of such a global phenomena.

On another issue, the Chairman will be aware I have been raising this in other forums outside this committee, and it was raised earlier by Deputy Brady, so it has been addressed and I do not wish to labour it. It is the issue of vaccine equality, which is a huge issue that links to the whole issue of gender inequality and to every other question, in particular the addressing of the Covid variants. I support the concerns around that and I agree our Government should be out there on that. As a committee, we have been very clear and prescriptive about that. As a committee, we need to be very focused on getting some sort of outcomes from our work because there is not much point in having weekly meetings where we are platitudinous if we do not effect some outcomes, although it is a very amorphous kind of area.

It is a great discussion. It is one of the tragic outcomes of Covid that it has exacerbated and set back progress on gender in quality. We are witnessing the reversing of progress in health equality, gender equality and educational opportunity. It is very sad that the entire equality agenda is a victim of Covid, on top of everything else. Those are my thoughts. I appreciate the opportunity to contribute. Well done to our guests.