Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to today's discussion as part of International Women's Day. Sadly, today's debate is taking place against the backdrop of the ongoing atrocities in Ukraine. More than 1.5 million people have fled from Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion, and the sad reality is most of those are women and young children, because Ukrainian men aged between 18 and 60 are remaining to fight. Many of those women are leaving behind their husbands, partners, fathers and children, not knowing if they will ever see them again. These are vulnerable women and children who are scared and who have had their whole world turned upside down. Many of them will be arriving on our shores. Indeed, more than 2,000 have already arrived here in the past week.

My Department of Social Protection and my officials are working to ensure personal public service numbers, PPSNs, are provided swiftly to Ukrainian citizens when they arrive. That will allow mothers and families arriving here to access immediately supports such as the supplementary welfare allowance and child benefit payment. All the details in this regard are available on my Department's website, and this information has been translated into Ukrainian and Russian. My Department, together with the Department of Justice, will also have a presence at Dublin Airport so we can help and assist people as soon as they arrive. I ask any Deputy who knows a Ukrainian family already in the country to put them in touch with their local Intreo office. The message is very clear: we are here to help. If the Russian invasion and the actions of President Putin represent the very worst of humanity, then let our national response represent the best of it. I just wanted to put that message on the record because it is vitally important on International Women's Day for us to let Ukrainian women and children know we stand by them and that these supports are available.

In the time remaining, I will touch briefly on some of the other policies I am progressing across my two Departments. I am a strong supporter of remote and flexible working. Recent statistics from my Department show female employment rates increased during the pandemic and are now at the highest level ever. I believe this is largely due to the move to a blended working model. If one positive has resulted from Covid-19, it is that the pandemic allowed us to have the largest ever pilot project on remote working and it proved it could work. The pandemic tore up the traditional view of the nine-to-five working day. We do not all need to be sitting bumper to bumper trying to get into the office for 9 o'clock every morning. There are better ways to manage our time. If we can take a more flexible approach, that will allow women and men to balance their work life with their family life. A blended working model presents significant opportunities to support women to get back into the workforce.

As part of the Pathways to Work strategy I have asked my officials to examine the idea of "returnships", where we would work with companies specifically to help women who may have spent some time out of the workforce after having children to get back into employment.

We now have approximately 220 remote working hubs on the Connected Hubs platform. Those are dotted in towns and villages throughout the country, close to local communities, schools and childcare facilities. Those hubs can and will help to facilitate the move to remote working nationally.

I know carers have been mentioned and my Department of Social Protection saw the carer's support grant increased in last year's budget to its highest ever level. It is also a priority for me that carers get the pension for the time they spend caring for people in the home. It is something that is very much a priority for this Government as well.

I am a firm believer in the phrase, "if you cannot see it, you cannot be it". That applies to politics, business, sport and right across our society. We need more women in this House and there is no getting away from that. We have made some progress in recent years, but let us be honest, we have come from a low base. We all need to do more, and I include my party in that. There is no point putting women on election tickets for the sake of it and just to make up the numbers or meet a quota requirement. We need to put forward women in constituencies where they have a realistic chance of winning a seat. As a Government, we have a target to have 40% gender balance on State boards but, ironically, the Cabinet has never in the history of the State met that target. There are four female Cabinet Ministers currently out of 15, and that represents approximately 26% of the Cabinet, well short of the gender balance target we have ourselves set for State boards. We should not fool ourselves on this or gives ourselves a pat on the back. We have made progress but we have a long way to go.

I am proud to say we have a wonderful generation of young people in Ireland, particularly young articulate women. I was delighted to attend an event last night to celebrate International Women's Day in the Íontas centre in Castleblayney. It was organised by the local women's group, Blayney Blades. At the event, a 14-year-old girl, Molly Ward, launched a book she has written on a trailblazing Monaghan woman, the late Sister Celine. Sister Celine led and supported so many women and men in the local community. As I said, if you cannot see it, you cannot be it. Celine probably did not realise it but she certainly inspired many women, young and old, and women must support each other in all walks of life. We also need the support of men to help us realise our full potential and ambitions.

See this speech in context