Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I join with both Deputy Kenny and the Taoiseach in paying tribute to Nuala Fennell, and in welcoming her husband Brian, who is here with us today, her children Jacqueline, Garrett and Amanda and their families. I join the Taoiseach in sympathising with Deputy Kenny and the Fine Gael Party on the loss of a former Member of this House.

We are paying tribute to a former Deputy, Senator and Minister of State who had an outstanding reforming record. Both Deputy Kenny and the Taoiseach referred in particular to the work she did in abolishing the status of illegitimacy. We are also paying tribute to somebody who has made an enormous difference to the life of this country. One of the things I find interesting when talking with groups of young people in particular is how difficult it is to describe what this country was like 40 years ago and the enormous changes that have taken place in terms of its social legislation.

Those changes came about because of the courage of the people who campaigned for that social change, who championed what was sometimes disparagingly referred to as the liberal agenda, over a period of time opening up this country and changing its laws. Nuala Fennell was a champion of that change, because not only was this a very different country 40 years ago, a country where a woman had to give up her job when she got married, where women were not entitled to the same pay for doing the same job as a man, where contraception was illegal, where the reformation of a family was unthinkable, but where the laws were simply not in place and where there was a culture of oppression.

Not only was that the legal position, but there was also a climate that made it very difficult to seek change. It took courage 40 years ago to take on the powerful forces that were opposed to social change in this country, to take on church, State, and some very conservative opinion and thinking. Nuala Fennell was a leader who took on those forces and brought about the kind of social changes and personal and social freedoms that we now enjoy, and that to some extent, we take for granted. Nuala Fennell is owed a great debt for the role she played in that.

She has been described by both Deputy Kenny and the Taoiseach as somebody who went about that work in a very pragmatic way, who saw the advantage of making incremental changes, of making the immediate reforms, of winning the battle step by step. As the saying goes, there is more to be done, because many of the things Nuala Fennell fought for are still not fully achieved. We still have an enormous problem in this country in the area of domestic violence. We might have equal pay legally but the average earnings of women are still far behind the average earnings of men and we have still a very long way to go in terms of getting equality in political representation. As we pay tribute to Nuala Fennell it would be well that we collectively rededicate ourselves to achieving the remaining objectives of the battle of which Nuala Fennell was a part, and the things she sought to achieve, some of which have yet to be fully realised. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a hanam.

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