Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our witnesses and I am delighted to see them all here in person. It is lovely to be back in in-person settings. Members have the option of being physically present in the committee room or may join the meeting, as quite a number are, via Microsoft Teams from their Leinster House offices. Members may not participate in the meeting from outside parliamentary precincts. If joining on Microsoft Teams, members should please mute their microphones when not making a contribution and use the raise hand function to indicate. Please note that in order to limit the risk of spreading Covid-19, the Service encourages all members, visitors and witnesses to continue to wear face masks when moving around the campus or in close proximity to others and to be respectful of people's physical space and adhere to public health advice.

We are continuing our meetings on the recommendations of the citizens' assembly and we are focusing on the recommendations on care and social protection, recommendations 4 to 19. We are delighted to engage today with Professor Kathleen Lynch, Family Carers Ireland and Care Alliance Ireland. I thank them all for coming in.

Our committee is a special Oireachtas time-limited committee established for a period of nine months from the start of March of this year. We are midway through our programme and have been considering the 45 recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly on Gender Equality, which we regard as a blueprint for achieving gender equality in Ireland. It is our intention as a committee to produce a practical report as to how best implement those recommendations at the end of our term in December. We are focused on that practical how-to piece and we do not seek to duplicate the work of the citizens' assembly. We are grateful to those stakeholders and others who have engaged with us and have given us written submissions and who are coming in to public hearings with us. We are focusing very much on the practical implementation of the recommendations.

I welcome Professor Kathleen Lynch from University College Dublin, UCD, who will be first to speak; Ms Zoe Hughes, the senior policy & research officer with the Care Alliance Ireland; and Mr. John Dunne, chief executive officer, and Ms. Clare Duffy, policy and public affairs manager, Family Carers Ireland. I invite each of the witnesses to give a five- or six-minute opening statement in turn and we will then go to a question and answer session and discussion with members.

Before we begin, I must read an important notice in on parliamentary privilege. Witnesses are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the evidence they are to give to the committee. However, if they are directed by the committee to cease giving evidence on a particular matter and they continue to do so, they are entitled, thereafter, to only qualified privilege in respect of their evidence. Only evidence connected with the subject matter of these proceedings is to be given and witnesses are asked to respect the parliamentary practice to the effect that where possible, they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make them identifiable.

Having given that notice, I call Professor Lynch to make her opening statement.