Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to have an opportunity to speak on the recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly on Gender Equality.

I listened with great interest to the Minister's speech. It is really good to see us having this debate. I was delighted to read the recommendations of the Citizens’ Assembly in April. What it has done in setting forward the 45 recommendations is present a visionary manifesto for change and for a society genuinely based on gender equality. The Minister quoted an open letter from assembly members in which they made clear their intent. It is inspirational and I join him in acknowledging the immense commitment and work done by the 99 citizens and Dr. Day, as chair of the assembly, in carrying out their task through Covid and adapting so swiftly to the move to working online.

We in the Labour Party very much support the expeditious implementation of the 45 recommendations. They set out what is really a social democratic, left-of-centre and feminist vision for change on gender equality. Equality is central to the Labour Party's political philosophy and political belief system. I should also say we are very supportive in general of the citizens’ assembly process, as we were of the constitutional convention which predated it, the establishment of which was originally proposed by the Labour Party in government. I was proud to chair the Labour Party delegation on the constitutional convention in 2012 and 2013, the recommendations of which paved the way for the holding of the marriage equality referendum in 2015, among other things. It is a valuable deliberative process to have these assemblies established and maintained in this country.

I wrote earlier this week about the potential for a new human rights culture to take hold in Ireland as we move through this awful and devastating pandemic. Assemblies like the Citizens’ Assembly and the constitutional convention are a way for us to move towards a new human rights culture in which the language of rights becomes more mainstreamed and accessible and we move to a new vision for rights that are not just first-generation civil and political rights but move beyond those more limited views of rights to a more substantial form of rights, that is, socio-economic rights which place positive obligations on the State to intervene to provide for greater equality.

In that regard it is very useful to see what the Citizens' Assembly recommended in terms of the amendment of the Constitution. The Minister focused on those recommendations as well. The assembly’s recommendation to amend Article 40.1 to refer explicitly to gender equality and non-discrimination builds on similar recommendations made by other expert groups. We might reflect that the Constitution of the Irish Free State had a guarantee of equality that included the words "without distinction of sex", so it was more cognisant of gender as a ground of discrimination and the need to provide specifically against gender discrimination. That would be a very welcome amendment to include.

The Minister asked specifically for the views of Members of this House on the second recommendation on amendments to the Constitution, that is, the recommendation that Article 41.2 be amended so the language would be rendered gender neutral. We might reflect on how extraordinary it is that in 2021 our Constitution still speaks of women as having a "life within the home" and of mothers as having "duties in the home". Not only is that absurdly discriminatory towards women and reflects, as the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, has said, a perpetuation of gender stereotypes but it is also discriminatory against men, who do not have any recognition of their paternal role. We do not see any reference to fathers and that also needs to be changed.

There have been many different formulas put forward for changing Article 41.2 and the Minister said he is well aware of the variations that have been proposed. We came close to the holding of a referendum on deletion of the very gender-specific language. What happened was, I suppose, a disagreement over what should replace it, if anything. From my experience in practice and taking constitutional cases, I would simply prefer deletion of the language. The problem is how one constructs a formula to recognise and support care and care work, as IHREC and the assembly again recommended, without setting up a hierarchy of rights. If we acknowledge the role of carers, what about the rights of those who are cared for? We must be so careful, in any constitutional reframing, about setting up hierarchies of rights. This is an issue on which we will, I hope, have more discussion and debate but it is difficult to see how we construct the very necessary recognition for care and the role of care in our community without creating difficulties. That is the real challenge. How do we recognise care in a way that is inclusive and not counterproductive? It is a debate we will continue to have.

The third recommendation is a more straightforward one. It proposes we amend Article 41 to protect family life but with the protection not limited to the marital family. Just yesterday, the Labour Party published a new Seanad Bill to give entitlement for a widow or widower’s contributory pension for a surviving cohabitant in recognition of the glaring discrepancy in our law whereby we do not have recognition for cohabiting couples when one partner dies. That is a serious issue and was highlighted by the very tragic case of John O'Meara who lost his long-time partner Michelle Batey and who, because they were not married, was not entitled to the same supports a married surviving spouse would have been. Cohabiting couples account for 150,000 households, 75,000 of them with children. They are unprotected in the event of family tragedy like that which visited Mr. O’Meara. The Labour Party will also put forward a Dáil motion to change this. I call on colleagues to support the motion, which will call for an expansion of the definition of family in Article 41 to include families that are not based on marriage. It is very welcome that we have expanded the definition of marriage but we need also to expand the definition of family, as the Citizens' Assembly has recommended.

I wish to refer very briefly to some of the other very important issues the assembly has made recommendations on, particularly those on women in politics. If I were to ask for two changes - and I notice the Minister did not commit to these in his speech - to ensure greater numbers of women participating in politics, the first would be to introduce a statutory right to maternity leave for women elected representatives, while the second would be to introduce quotas for local elections. Let us do that for the next local elections in 2024. A report I did for the justice committee in 2009 identified five "Cs" as obstacles to women’s progression politics, namely, lack of cash, an old boys' culture, lack of childcare, lack of confidence and candidate selection procedures. We sought to tackle at least some of those five Cs through the 2012 Act and the gender quota, which has been somewhat effective in the elections since, but we still see that the numbers of women Teachtaí Dála are very low by international standards. My election in July, as only the 37th woman in Dáil Éireann increased our proportion of women to 23%, so we still have a shockingly low level of women in politics. We need to see more positive action measures. The two changes to which I referred should be made. They are both key recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly.

I will also speak in support of the assembly recommendations on childcare. It is unfortunate we did not see anything immediate in the budget to address specifically the cost of childcare for parents. I acknowledge the very important progress the Minister has made since taking up the portfolio and the progress we saw in the budget but it is still not working for parents, professionals, providers or, indeed, children. Just today, I got an email from a constituent in Dublin Bay South telling me the crèche their child was in had raised the fees substantially on the day the budget was announced. I know the Minister is proposing a new funding model and I very much welcome any move towards a universal public childcare system but it cannot come soon enough for the parents who are paying so much money for places that are so hard to access, as there is a scarcity of places too. The Labour Party has called for equal early years policy which would be a Donogh O'Malley moment to move us towards a system where every child in Ireland is guaranteed a free place in childcare. So much inequality stems from that disadvantage in the early years and we need to tackle that.

As with so many of the 45 recommendations, the Citizens' Assembly has given us a very clear pathway for change in Ireland. It is a vision of change towards a society in which women and men are genuinely equal and we can say we are a society in which citizens and all of us resident in this Republic are truly valued as equal in our Republic. Unfortunately, that has not been the case for far too long.

I see I am running out of time. I could say a lot more on the gender pay gap, which I am glad to see we are finally tackling, although again legislation introduced by the Labour Party some years ago on this issue should have been passed by now. We know that women experience poverty to a greater degree than men. We need to address the lack of socio-economic rights for women and men in order to achieve a truly equal Republic.

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