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

Apologies have been received from Deputy Bríd Smith.

Members have the option of being physically present in the committee room or joining the meeting via MS Teams from their Leinster House offices but may not participate from outside the parliamentary precincts. I ask members joining on MS Teams to mute their microphones when not making a contribution and to use the raise hand function to indicate. All those present in the committee room are asked to exercise personal responsibility in respect of protection against the risk of contracting Covid-19.

Today we are considering the implementation of the recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly on Gender Equality generally. I warmly welcome the Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, and thank him for giving his time to join the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Gender Equality. We are conscious of the demands on his time and are grateful to him for attending. I also welcome the officials accompanying the Taoiseach, Ms Elizabeth Canavan, assistant secretary at the Department of the Taoiseach, Mr. Barry Vaughan, principal officer at the Department of the Taoiseach, and Ms Jane Anne Duffy, principal officer at the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth.

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

Before I invite the Taoiseach to give his opening statement, I note we have been working on the 45 recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly on Gender Equality for the past few months. We are grateful to the citizens for all of the work they put in and to Dr. Catherine Day and her team for chairing the assembly. Our work is focused on the practical implementation of the recommendations. We will hold a number of public hearings over the next two to three weeks and will then hold private meetings to deliberate on our final report which we hope to present to the Taoiseach and the Government by the start of December.

I now invite the Taoiseach to give his opening statement before opening the floor to members for questions and answers.