Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We would all welcome the Taoiseach's promise in relation to a citizens' assembly on gender equality being established. While women have made great progress in this country, nonetheless there is a lot still to do. This is the centenary of Constance Markievicz becoming a Cabinet Minister, the first such woman, certainly in Britain or Ireland.

In terms of gaps, we have the gender pay gap, which in Ireland is 14%. Some 25% of Irish companies acknowledge that there is a significant gender pay gap in their business. We have a serious deficiency in the number of women involved in the governance of the universities and institutes of higher education. That needs to be specifically addressed. If women are not involved in governance, for instance, fully represented as presidents of universities and educational institutions, which they are not at all at present, it means women are absent from a very significant sphere of Irish life.

We have the issue of domestic violence. On International Women's Day, the Government signed up to the Istanbul Convention but, like the signing up by the Taoiseach's colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Finian McGrath, to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, nothing has been done by Government to implement the requirements of the Istanbul Convention, which would mean far more refuge spaces provided in Ireland for victims of domestic violence who are mainly and principally women and their children.

The sooner this citizens' assembly is established, the sooner it can do some serious work to improve the position of women in Ireland.

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