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

I am delighted to have the chance to speak on this important Bill and I commend Deputy Carroll MacNeill on her initiative in bringing it forward. It is really important that we are debating this very timely legislation and it is really good to hear the very honest contributions to the debate from the men and women who have spoken. When I was first elected to these Houses in 2007, to the Seanad, I was pregnant with my second daughter. It was shocking to me how difficult it was to accommodate a baby within these precincts. I was very grateful to the women Members who had gone before me on whose initiative a crèche had been established. After some difficulty, I was able to access the crèche which was hugely helpful. It meant that I could run over and breastfeed a small baby and contribute to Seanad debates on a part-time basis. In those early months, one really wants to be spending as much time at home as possible but at the same time, as an elected representative, when there was no provision for maternity leave, there was an imperative to also be contributing.

This Bill is an important part of a whole package of measures that are necessary to modernise our Parliament, as Deputy Carroll MacNeill said herself, and to make it more inclusive, more friendly towards women, towards men with caring responsibilities, more family friendly and more flexible. It is timely because as we are coming through the pandemic, all of us have learned the benefits of remote working. All of us are navigating that process of trying to facilitate more working from home. When we are seeing that debate taking place in workplaces more generally, it is very important that we in the Houses of Oireachtas would lead by example and seek to facilitate remote working. It is unfortunate that it will require a constitutional amendment to do so. I have spoken with my colleague Deputy Howlin, who has long experience of Dáil procedure, and he says that it should be possible to allow for committees to conduct hearings remotely and to continue to do so. We are doing it already but there is this strange anomaly whereby we can participate in committee meetings remotely from our offices but not from outside the precincts. I live a ten-minute cycle away from Leinster House, in Dublin Bay South. I cannot participate remotely in a committee meeting from my home office but I can participate from my office here in the precinct. There are anomalies that require addressing and it is very important, therefore, that we bring this legislation forward.

As others have said, this is also in keeping with recommendations that were made by Mary Upton's excellent committee on a family friendly and inclusive parliament and with the recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly on gender equality. I thank Deputy Carroll MacNeill for her reference to my work in that regard. I am very proud and honoured to have been appointed as Chairperson of the Oireachtas Special Committee on Gender Equality. Our brief or remit is to ensure the implementation of the 45 recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly on gender equality. One of those recommendations in particular, recommendation No. 23, relates to improving family-friendly practices for all representatives elected to public office. The Citizens' Assembly recommended flexible working options, not just within Parliament but also at local authority level. It also recommended making maternity, paternity and parental leave available to all elected representatives, including Ministers. That is long overdue. I was glad, in another role as Vice Chair of the women's caucus, along with Senator Fiona O'Loughlin, to meet the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth and hear his proposals for bringing forward maternity, paternity and parental leave for public representatives.

There is clearly a momentum behind these measures and that is really important. The Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality will be putting forward very practical recommendations to Government as to how to implement the Citizen's Assembly recommendations. As Deputy Carroll MacNeill has said, among our recommendations will be how we bring forward those three recommendations for constitutional change to create a more inclusive Constitution, one that is updated and that provides for gender equality, a more inclusive definition of family and that will change the very sexist language around women's role and the role of mothers.

6 o’clock

The amendment that Deputy Carroll MacNeill is proposing in this Bill would be an integral part of a package of amendments to be put to the people in one day. That would be a really good way of approaching this, not so much as a stand-alone amendment but one that is very much part of an amendment that is about creating a more gender-equal Ireland where women have a more equal status and, in particular, where women are more facilitated, supported and encouraged in running for public office. We should not forget that our Parliament still looks very male, stale and pale - perhaps not as much as it was when I was first elected to the Seanad in 2007, but it is certainly still very, very male. After my election to the Dáil last year, I was very struck by how different it is from the Seanad. Only 23% of Deputies are female. There is 40% women's representation in the Seanad. Let us make the Dáil more representative of women and let us bring forward a range of measures to do that.

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