Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this motion. I support it fully. I commend Age Action Ireland, the ICA and each individual who picked up the telephone to contact Deputies in recent years to highlight this grave injustice. Many women were forced to give up work, as everybody knows, and stay at home. They reared the next generation. In fact, some of those present are of the generation in question. The women have been given no thanks for what they did and are basically treated as second-class citizens.

We talk about how the problem should be resolved. All evening I have been listening to comments on who did what in 1977, 1997 or 2011. That is not going to solve it. We have to find a way of solving this and moving forward. To be brutally honest, we have to be careful about bringing people up to the top of the hill and leaving them there. Many people rang me today and asked whether the matter will be dealt with when the vote goes through. The answer is that it will not. I have not been a Deputy for that long but I have seen many motions on subjects that have featured for months but in respect of which nothing happened. This is because a motion is not legislation or a budget. People need to be told that straight out. Unless those in opposition all work together and do not support a finance Bill, or unless some deal is done, no change will be made. I have listened with interest to Deputy Penrose, who has said there would be money in a fund. We should not hesitate in this regard.

We also need to bear in mind that it is not only women who are affected. There are men who have contacted me and who are caught in this scenario also. We must ensure we treat all our elders equally. It is awfully unjust if people who stayed at home to rear a family or men who went away to England to work and came back do not get fair play as a result of a break in credits. This needs to be sorted out.

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