Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Citizens' Assembly makes excellent observations and recommendations on gender equality and women. I thank Dr. Catherine Day and the other citizens who took park.

I would like to put the assembly's recommendations in context. If one were to pick up and smell poverty, homelessness, inequality, the climate and biodiversity crises, and the abduction, rape and murder of girls and women, it would all have the same stink, and that stink is given off by an entitled, privileged and patriarchal elite. As politicians, we are not meant to be keepers of the status quo. As parliamentarians, we are not meant to be apologists for a patriarchy that in this State has instituted inequality, homelessness, crises in health, housing, caring, childcare and mental health, and poverty. This is especially important for our daughters. None of us would be willing to accept for our daughters what we had to take in giving up and giving in - giving up our jobs, our independence, our own incomes and, often, our own names. For decades, we were forced to give up our children because "acceptable" motherhood was dependent on marriage to a man. Many women were forced to stay in violent marriages because they no longer had jobs or means of providing for themselves and their children. I am thinking of LGBT mothers who for decades lived in fear for their safety, their identities and their children because of their sexuality. Many had to live a lie because if they came out or, worse, were outed, they would lose their children. Thank God, we have since passed the referendum on marriage equality and we are getting somewhat better.

Today, however, women are still giving up in terms of unequal pay and the exorbitant cost of childcare that is often located miles from where they work or live. That assumes they can get childcare at all, given that there is a shortage. If women are pregnant, they are being forced to give up having their partners by their side and to give in to intrusive internal exams while in labour, not for any medical reason, but to ensure that labour is established so that they can get access to their partners. That is unacceptable. Maybe women should retire to the pubs and night clubs where it is perfectly safe for their partners to have a pint and themselves to have a dose of oxytocin as well as a bit of gas and air with the bags of smoky bacon crisps.

In here, female Deputies have to give up their right to vote on their constituents' behalf while on maternity leave. Out there, women are having the living daylights kicked and punched out of them, but their right to a response to their 999 calls is being taken away by the Garda Síochána.

6 o’clock

Despite all of the political razzmatazz on the stage in Dublin Castle and the arms linked in the sunshine, we are still waiting for safe access zones to access an abortion.

On the recommendations with regard to women in the home, Sinn Féin would like to see women having a home. We are all for that because a home is a basic commodity that women need to prosper. Women do not want to be camped out with their children in their mothers' back rooms and the infantalisation that brings. With regard to Bunreacht na hÉireann and the woman's place being in the home, all of us here know that a woman's place is in the revolution, be it political, social, financial, cultural, spiritual or psychological.

On the topic of the citizens' assembly, we need a citizens' assembly on reuniting our country and on the deep damage that was done to women through partition. In our country, North and South, we will never have true equality of citizenship until Ireland is united with dignity, respect and care for all, north, south, east and west.

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