Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am pleased to present the Government's response to recommendations of the Second Report of the Convention on the Constitution. The Government welcomes this second report. We continue to be encouraged by the engagement of the participants in the process. This was evidenced again in the most recent meeting of the convention, which took place two weeks ago and at which the question of whether to give citizens residing outside the State the right to vote in Presidential elections at Irish embassies was discussed.

As Deputies will know, the Convention on the Constitution was previously tasked with considering and making recommendations as it sees fit on the questions of whether to amend the constitutional clause on the role of women in the home, how to encourage greater participation by women in public life and how to increase the participation of women in politics. This is the subject matter of the second report, which we are discussing this morning.

The establishment of the Convention on the Constitution was approved by resolution of the Houses of the Oireachtas in July 2012. The resolution establishing the convention requires the Government to provide its response to each recommendation of the convention within four months. If the Government proposes to accept the recommendation, it is required to indicate the timeframe it envisages for the holding of any related referendum. Due to the summer vacation, this is the first opportunity I have had to report on behalf of the Government to the House in relation to the report we received in May and on which a reply was due while the House was in recess.

The commitments in the programme for Government in respect of these two issues reflect the fact that Ireland has changed significantly since the Constitution was adopted in 1937. While women have always played a central role in the family, over 975,000 women are now also active in the labour market. Over 500,000 of these women have children and therefore have additional caring responsibilities. A further significant number of adults, both men and women, have caring responsibilities for older parents and other adult dependents.

We know from research that we need to encourage greater sharing of family responsibilities among the partners in the family unit. Indeed, this is a stated goal of European Union gender equality policy. EU economic policy encourages member states to take all necessary steps to increase the labour market participation of women. The female population across Europe, and indeed in Ireland, has achieved higher standards of education than their male counterparts. Ireland is to the forefront at EU level in respect of the number of female graduates. We must ensure these women have every opportunity to advance their careers, while sharing with their partners the caring role for their families.

The programme for Government includes specific recommendations to advance the role of women in public and political life, as well as a commitment to examine the language in the Constitution. The Government is actively implementing the national women's strategy. Although it pre­dated our tenure in office, the strategy affords a clear vision to equalise socioeconomic opportunity for women, ensure the well-being of women and engage women as equal, effective active citizens.

The implementation of this cross-departmental strategy, which contains more than 20 objectives and 200 actions, is overseen by my Department. We have already seen many positive developments for the betterment of the lives of women in Ireland, including the narrowing of some key gaps in gender equality, particularly in relation to employment and health care. We are also seeing better cross-departmental and cross-agency co­ordination of services to address violence against women and human trafficking.

I will now turn to the recommendations in the Convention's second report and give the Government's response to each of them. As I have mentioned, the convention was tasked to deal with two specific issues in its deliberations. Those deliberations led to votes on two additional propositions; namely the possible incorporation of gender equality as a principle in the Constitution and the possible amendment of its text to include gender-sensitive language.

I will turn first to the original issue of the language on "women in the home" in our Constitution. This language has been examined critically on a number of occasions over the past 20 years, including by the Second Commission on the Status of Women in 1992, the Constitution Review Group in 1996, the All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution in 2006 and the UN committee which oversees the implementation of the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women, which was adopted in 1979 and which Ireland ratified in 1985.

While the Convention on the Constitution did not offer an alternative text in its report, a majority of its members favoured changing the clause to make it gender-neutral and recommended that it should include references to "other carers in the home" and "to include carers beyond the home". On a continuum, a majority of participants at the convention also recommended that the State should offer a "reasonable level of support" to ensure that those to whom the newly constructed amendment should apply "shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour".

The Government accepts the first recommendation of the report in relation to the need to amend the language in Article 41.2 of the Constitution on the role of women in the home.

Government is mindful that a number of wordings have been proposed previously and commits to examine the proposals and other options to find the most appropriate wording to present in a forthcoming referendum. Full account will be taken of the comments of the convention, including those on carers.

The inclusion of a reference by the convention to the issue of carers is the reason why it is not possible to offer a more specific timeframe for a referendum to take on board the overarching recommendation at this time. Extensive consultations will be necessary, including with Government colleagues and their officials, on the new elements and the appropriate choice of language for incorporation into the Constitution. I am establishing a task force in my Department to look at the issues, collaborating with other Departments and the Office of the Attorney General as necessary, with a view to completing the task and reporting back to Government by 31 October 2014.

The second issue examined by the Convention on the Constitution was the encouragement of greater participation by women in public life and increasing their participation in politics. The convention report advises that the question of a constitutional provision for this purpose was narrowly defeated but that a significant majority of convention members recommended more government action in this area.

Both the treaties of the European Union and the CEDAW Convention, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, allow for temporary special measures to address deficits in gender equality. The Government accepts the recommendation of the convention that the Constitution should not be amended to address the role of women in political and public life. However, we are also aware that, despite some 40 years of equality legislation in Ireland, women are still significantly underrepresented in political life, in senior management and corporate governance roles. In all those fields, women's representational levels in Ireland are both below the EU average and the majority of other EU Member States. In the published average data, which excluded Croatia, Ireland is ranked 24th out of 27 member states in relation to women's representation in the Lower House of Parliament.

On corporate boards, for which the Commission is currently proposing specific actions, we rank among the poorest in terms of female representation, at just over 8% for membership of the boards of top stock exchange companies. The EU average is close to 15% and the proposed EU target is 40% by 2020. However, we have as I mentioned a very well educated female work force. We know that women's representation on State boards is better at 34% but it has flat lined at that level for the past five or six years.

I remind the House that the programme for Government includes a commitment to increase the role of women in political life and in decision making. As Minister for Justice and Equality, I welcome the appointment by the Government, over the past two and a half years, of talented and skilled women to top positions, many in the area of law and justice, including our Attorney General, Máire Whelan; Chief Justice Susan Denham; the President of our District Court, Judge Rosemary Horgan; our Director of Public Prosecutions, Claire Loftus; and Deputy Garda Commissioner Noirín O'Sullivan.

Over the past two and a half years, 40% of appointments made to the judiciary have been women and 60% have been men. On Wednesday next, two members of the High Court, Judges Mary Laffoy and Elizabeth Dunne, whose appointments have already been announced, will become judges of the Supreme Court. By this day week, there will have been four appointments by this Government to the Supreme Court of two men and two women, a gender balance of 50:50. It is also important to state that each appointment has been made on merit. The Government has sought to ensure that gender is not some subconscious invisible barrier which gets in the way of, or prevents, the appointment of talented and skilled women to important public positions and positions of leadership. At the time of my appointment as Minister for Justice and Equality and Minister for Defence, I believed it was important that we achieved a better gender balance in the courts. Huge progress has been made and at leadership level there is now complete gender equality in that two of our top judges, the President of the District Court and the Chief Justice, are women and two, the Presidents of the Circuit and High Court, are men.

A number of important initiatives have been completed or are ongoing and these will be built on throughout the life of this Government. Those include the all-party conference on women and politics hosted by my colleague, Minister of State at the Department of Justice and Equality, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, on 30 January 2012. The event attracted more than 300 participants and fostered greater awareness of the issue and the challenges for political parties and the public. The conference heard from the political and administrative leaders of all the main political parties, including the Taoiseach and Tánaiste and Deputies Martin and Mary Lou McDonald, together with the chairperson of the Green Party.

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