Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Perhaps Deputies were nettled because they did not formulate the idea in the motion. There is always a reason. The Labour Party's vision as outlined in the motion is for all children in Ireland to have an equal chance to fulfil their potential. That was the promise in 1919 but it has not been delivered. We must all hold up our hands, but now is the time to try to achieve that objective. It is 2019 but we still have not achieved so many of the basic gains. Focusing on a fair start is a fundamental challenge for the Government. We all talk about helping ourselves. Most of my family had to go to England in the 1950s. I was over there recently as an uncle who was 92 died a few months back. The health service is good enough there, but some of the family were ill, and every time they got medicine they had to pay a prescription charge. The man in question worked with Murphy, McAlpine and the whole shebang. He was a hard-working man. He used to say the old home sod was a great country. He got 10p or something for a fare every week and £100 for fuel allowance if the temperature fell. That is what he got after spending 60 years working. We should not always decry what we have. We might not have achieved everything we want but we are on the road to improvement, I hope.

It is not good enough for nine in ten children to be securely housed. It is not good enough for nine in ten children to get a good education. Our goal as a Parliament and people should be to examine why some people have been left behind. If one in ten is left behind, we must consider why it has happened. That means we must understand the reason for homelessness and address its root cause, as outlined by my colleague, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan. It means we must remove legal impediments to equality, and nobody can say we were not at the vanguard of such efforts. We did it at great personal cost and at a cost to our party.

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