Declan Breathnach (Louth, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

By way of introduction to the debate and notwithstanding the fact that many people say self praise is no praise, I note as a relatively new member of the House and as the newest member of the Budgetary Oversight Committee how commendable are its staff and members in respect of the work they do. The potential of the committee to look at budgetary and legislative suggestions and ideas excites me a great deal. I encourage Members to put forward such suggestions and ideas to the committee.

The report on gender budgeting is to be commended. The late and great Kofi Annan once said:

Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenge of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good governance.

Supporting the report on gender budgeting before the House this evening would be a step towards building a foundation block or cornerstone for the Oireachtas into the future. It would ensure that the good governance referred to by Kofi Annan would happen. Members of the Oireachtas must have an awareness and full understanding of the potential positive and negative impacts of budgetary measures on both females and males. While some good work has been done and there have been some achievements, the House and the Government must implement the real, realisable and concrete proposals outlined in the committee's report on gender budgeting. The committee believes that an equality budget statement, as referenced by Deputy Lahart, must be read by the Minister for Finance in conjunction with his Budget Statement. That is paramount to the gender budgeting process. Such a statement must set out the broad and ambitious strategic equality indicators. The committee's report further recommends that the research and analysis carried out by the parliamentary oversight office should be heeded and acted on by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. The report also recommends that the six Departments which piloted the initial programme should be allowed to further analyse their operations in order to enhance the work carried out to date.

Borrowing the slogan "Much done and more to do", it is true that if gender budgets were succeeding in the House, issues of gender inequality would not be raised so continuously here. Issues like affordable child care would have been long addressed and would not have led to women leaving the labour force due to lack of adequate and affordable child-care services. If we were succeeding, the clear gender imbalance in appointments to State boards would not still exist. Participation and investment in female sport would not be the poor relation. The lack of focus until recently on STEM projects in education for girls would, I trust, have demonstrated the lack of parity of esteem for that sex when it comes to brain power in the fields of science, technology, engineering and maths. As a former teacher, the imbalance in the number of male and female teachers, in particular at primary school level, worries me as I believe children, especially younger children, require the involvement of both sexes. While that might not appear to be a gender-equality issue, it needs to be addressed as part of this process.

I do not want to rabbit on about all of the issues, but they are not exhaustive. Many Members have referred this evening to the identification of anomalies in the tax system, social welfare and pension entitlements. The PRSI system, for instance, has treated women unfairly and been regrettable, insensitive and lacking in budget proofing. Recognition of the need for gender budgeting would go a long way towards dealing with this unfair discrimination and these unfair disadvantages. The report recommends bringing together two sets of knowledge and expertise, namely gender equality expertise and public finance management, which would be a positive step. I draw the attention of the House to the enshrining of gender budgeting in Austria's constitution.

If initiated in this country, this would bring real accountability to good gender equality governance.

I highlight to the Dáil a number of challenges in this report, for example, the lack of data broken down by gender, the need for cultural changes, both by us as politicians and equally by our civil servants, also recognising, most importantly, that the current budget process is not gender neutral.

Like others on the committee, I commend its Chairman, Deputy Brophy, and its Vice Chairman beside me, Deputy Lahart, Miriam Plunkett, Catherine McCarthy, the staff of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, the National Women's Council of Ireland, the Irish Wheelchair Association, the Disability Federation of Ireland, not to mention the ESRI, who, together with much advice from other budgetary oversight committees on the issue, went way beyond the call of duty. I support this report and, like others, commend it to the House.

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