Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the report. The assembly has become an important part of our democratic process. Yet again, it has produced a nuanced representation of the state of gender inequality. I thank everybody who was involved in the assembly vote, both men and women. Sometimes men feel excluded from this debate or they feel that we need to be defensive in responding to the debate. This is an issue, like all inequality issues, which disproportionately impacts women. It eats away at all of society like all inequality does. Very few men have felt unsafe walking home at night or been widely discriminated against with regard to opportunities. That male privilege sometimes needs to be set aside in reacting. It also needs to be harnessed in order to deliver the change that is needed. Representation and political participation were key recommendations. There are so many in this that you could have a debate on each one of the recommendations. As the Fianna Fáil councillor liaison, I want to talk specifically about local government.

There are ten constituencies in the Dáil that are represented entirely by male Deputies. At local authority level, women make up only one quarter of all councillors and the level of mismatch between male and female representation varies widely between different geographic areas. That is bad for politics and unfair for women. The recommendations of the Citizen's Assembly on Gender Equality provide a pathway to removing some of those big barriers.

Maternity and paternity leave need to be more available, particularly to local elected councillors. Many female councillors have contacted me on this and have made a keen effort to resolve it. Currently, a councillor requires their local authority to pass a resolution to allow them an absence based on illness. We know pregnancy is not an illness and this is unacceptable, inadequate and insulting to women. Female and male partners of councillors who are having a child also have no right to extended leave without taking a similar hit in their income.

I welcome the Association of Irish Local Government, AILG, report. It has done huge work on this issue. The proposals for paid paternity leave it published earlier this year will inform the ongoing work of the Government. I urge the Government to implement this legislation as soon as possible.

The introduction of leave for parents is only one part of the wider change which is needed in local government. Remote attendance and hybrid meetings should become a permanent feature as we enter post-pandemic life. This has been a transformative measure for parents of young children in attending council meetings, as it has in all walks of life. We need to be far more ambitious in regard to remote working and home working, both for climate action and for the societal benefits they deliver. The potential of remote work must be harnessed and facilitated where possible and I welcome the steps the Government has taken with the national remote working strategy and the incentives provided in budget 2022. Actually, they are not incentives but a recognition of the costs. Perhaps there should be greater incentives.

The area of childcare is vital in encouraging full participation of women. The cost of childcare is crippling many families. It limits the choices of both parents, who each have responsibilities, if childcare arrangements are not in place. Fees regularly cost more than a mortgage and present a significant barrier to both parents being able to work.

My children are now ten and 12 and for almost the entire time I served in local government we had to arrange for different forms of childcare. I have calculated that we must have spent more than €100,000 of post-tax income to facilitate childcare. My brother reckons he spent north of €120,000 over that decade. It is an incredible cost. No amount of tax incentives will be able to meet that but a publicly funded, accessible and regulated model of childcare will. I welcome the investment in the sector in the recent budget and I believe it is the beginning of realising what this report talks about, the targets set out in it for childcare and the contribution it can make to ending inequality. The programme for Government contains a commitment to reform the childcare system and create one that supports the staff working in it. In many cases, those staff are disproportionately women and the low pay levels have an impact on them. The introduction of a universal childcare scheme is welcome but we have a long way to go.

This report is incredibly ambitious and needs to be met with a similar level of ambition from Government, public agencies and public life. I encourage all those watching the debate to examine the report and see how they can take up the challenge of ending gender inequality.

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