Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As of yesterday, more than half of the Sinn Féin representatives in the Assembly in Stormont are women and the lights are still on and the world has not stopped turning. Indeed, the work will continue. This can and will happen in this and other Parliaments and it will be a good thing, a positive thing and something that we should celebrate. We are not nearly there yet. There is a huge amount of work yet to be done. When reading the recommendations of the citizens' assembly, I was struck by how much work remains to be done. Every year, we have statements on International Women's Day. You try to not be negative because you want to put the best foot forward and not disrespect those campaigners who have come before you and the tremendous work they have done, but every year on International Women's Day I reflect on how much work we have yet to do. Pandemics and major world events can sometimes push back that work. There is a need to look not only at the inequalities faced by women, which is really important, but also, within the gender known as female, the inequalities experienced by people of colour, members of the Traveller community, migrants and those who are marginalised within a marginalised group that ironically enough makes up 51% of our population.

A couple of the recommendations jumped out at me. The first is the legal right to collective bargaining. I note that the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, did not mention that and neither could he have mentioned every recommendation but the reason he did not mention it is that it is not important to him. I do not believe it is important to people on the Government benches, but I would like to be persuaded otherwise. For workers, the union is their voice. When you are a woman in work and a member of a group that experiences inequality that voice is even more important. It is vital that we legislate for the legal right to collective bargaining. We have to give workers the strength and capacity to be vocal in their workplace because things will not change in the workplace. We will be back here again talking about the gender pay gap. We might have more information on it, but we will keep coming back to it.

Likewise, the reference to the right to flexible working, and not the right to request remote working, is a nonsense. We already have the right to flexible working. Every worker in the State can ask their boss for flexible working, remote working or blended working. We can all do that. What we want is a legal right to have that considered and not refused unless it is an unreasonable request. Again, the emphasis of the Government is very often on placating the employer and not the worker and what he or she needs. In this instance, we need a legal right underpinning remote working and flexible working. Women will say, because disproportionately they do most of the caring, that during the pandemic it fell on them, but they also saw the advantages that could come from remote and flexible working. It worked for people but now people are being asked to return to the office. We need that legislated for. We need to reverse it so that we put the worker at the centre of it, not the employer as is often the case with the Government.

I thank the Chair and members of the citizens' assembly for their time, dedication and honesty and for the thoughtful way they approached this work. They have provided us with a plan and a roadmap. I hope the Government is listening.

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