Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to take part in the debate and thank Deputy Kerrane for bringing the motion before the House. I also thank Deputy Bríd Smith, who has put great work into this area. Really, though, this came from the ground, and what Sinn Féin has rightly done, and it deserves praise for having done so, is to respond to the organic movement of women on the ground. We have almost 30,000 signatures asking us to do something. I am very disappointed that the senior Minister has left. I realise that Ministers are very busy, but this is a particularly important topic. The National Women's Council of Ireland is giving full support to the motion and there is no Minister who happens to be female in the Dáil, which is unfortunate. If there is a personal reason for her absence, I will certainly forgive her. It does not look well or augur well, however.

We have learned two messages from Covid - we simply cannot go back to where we were, and we are all in this together. I did not believe either message but I went with them for a while and tried to put aside my cynicism. Certainly, the people in residential homes, direct provision and meat factories were not treated like the rest of us. The message that we are all in it together is far from accurate. Certainly, we treated the people over 70 very differently and with no justification whatsoever.

That there is no going back has been laid bare tonight in the speech from the Minister. I listened to it in my office and now I have read it and I am horrified by its contents. I would like to know who wrote it because clearly we are going to treat women and mothers very differently. We have elevated the businesses, who I supported here for the last number of weeks. Indeed I spent a number of hours today going through 141 pages of very complicated legislation, most of it in schedules. We are going to guarantee that we will pay millions into a fund so we can take back billions with very little oversight from the Dáil and very little chance to put in amendments or to understand the legislation, other than it is good for us because we will get lots of millions that we can give out to big businesses - not microenterprises, not even small businesses, but big businesses with some small businesses. That is very complicated legislation and I have had great difficulty understanding it but the Minister has told us that simple legislation in relation to extending maternity leave is too complex and cannot be done. Deputy Sherlock has already referred to this and he is perfectly right. The speech is utterly contemptuous.

Further on in the speech, the Minister acknowledges that it applies to a small number of people and the consequence of that is a small amount of money but it "would also impact on others, most obviously on employers, who are already struggling with the impact of Covid-19 on their workplaces", and so on. This would add to their challenges. I do not know if the Minister of State can stand over that, but it is utterly contemptuous of mothers and women and places very little value on children.

The background to this motion is the debacle over childcare. No matter what we read - the Parliamentary Budget Office, OECD reports, documents from the European Commission - they have all highlighted our failure to provide affordable childcare. Like affordable houses, it will never happen unless the State makes a commitment to public childcare. The State must be i lár an aonaigh, right in the middle of providing services. This point was made earlier by Deputy Boyd Barrett on how the public service is coming into its own now in order to save the other side. It would be great if we looked at that in a positive way and provided public childcare, public health, public education and realised the value of it, rather than standing over a speech like this which is utterly contemptuous and utterly fails to deal with the problems the women have outlined, including the National Women's Council of Ireland, NWCI. There is a statement here to the effect that the reopening of childcare has relieved many parents of the burden of childcare. Childcare is not a burden. It is our duty and a labour of love and we should have a Government that facilitates that. Sometimes that care will be in crèches and childcare facilities and sometimes it will be at home. I have run out of time. I would like to go on but I will not, in deference to my colleague.

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