Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Fáiltím roimh an deis a bheith páirteach sa díospóireacht seo. Tá athair agam sna flaithis agus is dóigh liom go bhfuil straois ar a aghaidh go bhfuiltear ag caint fúmsa mar eiseamláir. Is rud greannmhar é sin. I welcome the opportunity to say a few words. The fact I have been referred to as a role model certainly has put a smile on my father's face, who is somewhere up in heaven. I can say that openly. Deputy Durkan said that we are making progress. We are making progress. Let me put the progress in context. In 1918, Countess Markievicz was elected as the first woman Member of the Dáil. In the Second Dáil, we had five women and then it went up and down. In 1981, we passed the barrier of having ten women in the Dáil. Finally, here we are in this Dáil and we have 37 women Deputies.

If we look then at equality it is not just about women; it is about a thriving economy. I always try to use the language of men when I am speaking about domestic violence and gender-based violence. We cannot possibly have a thriving economy nor an equal society so long as we have appalling violence. I am afraid we have appalling violence. It makes it impossible for mothers and children growing up in it to take part actively in society in a confident way. What progress have we made on tackling domestic violence? A conservative estimate of the cost is €2.2 billion. I am always uncomfortable using this measurement because there are so many other aspects of gender-based and sexual violence that I would like to talk about but I try to use the language of patriarchy. The cost of it alone might catch attention so people will say even on that level we should begin to look at it. This is a conservative estimate.

In 1997, the year my second son was born, we had a task force on violence. There was a report of 337 pages. We are still speaking about something as basic as a safe place and a safe refuge. I do not know how long we waited for the report. There was constant pressure and we finally got it to be told what we all know, which is that there is no safe place for women or men when they are subjected to violence. This is the most basic thing we need. I would have thought that at this stage we would have places that were multifunctional. We have statements on the Irish language and statements on International Women's Day. We should have the aim that at some point these statements will be redundant. At some point refuges should be redundant and then we can say we have done our job. There was the appalling murder of Ashling Murphy. I want to use her name again. I have used it before. "Aisling" means dream. The challenge for us is to make the dream of zero tolerance of violence against women a reality in her memory. She is one of many women who have suffered.

With regard to International Women's Day and the national maternity hospital, as I said earlier it is an absolute insult that three wise men at the top, who have been duly elected in a democracy, think it is okay to have secret talks or to collude with secret talks about something as important as a national maternity hospital. Earlier, the Taoiseach told us to use our Private Member's time. It has been used three times. Three different groups have used Private Members' time to say it should be a public hospital on a public site that is run publicly. If we have learned anything, this is the most basic thing we need.

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Only today, the Taoiseach was infantilising women all over again, as the institutions did. The Government and the three wise men know best and this hospital will be built regardless of what this Dáil has clearly said on three occasions, with the Government not once voting against the motion. That is significant. We called for a public hospital on public land to be run publicly but it never happened.

With regard to women in politics, women just have to have courage and stand. I do not know what other supports we can provide. Of course, supports are necessary but women have to stand up and say they look on the world differently. We do not need more women for the sake of having more women. Neither do we need more men. We need people who see that climate change is an existential threat. We need Deputies who do not see war as inevitable. Women can bring a different perspective, the perspective that war simply does not work. I welcome the men who come along with that. In the end, we have to sit down, engage in diplomacy, look at what causes war in the first place and deal with that proactively. We must use our neutrality in that manner, rather than seeing it as something that is negative or not active. We should use it in a very active policy and bring a different perspective, the perspective of a woman and of all of the men who want to share it. That perspective says there is a different way of doing things. Ultimately, we have to go home, look our children in the eye and say there is a different way. The planet is burning, whether from climate change or from war, and there is a great nuclear threat hanging over us. We flippantly talk about war when there is no way out of it. I welcome more women in politics. I also welcome more men who see life in a different way and who have the courage to stand up and demand that this not be done in our name.

There are many other things I could say but the pension issue is a direct result of the inequality. I will mention one specific aspect of that, which was recently pointed out in the committee. As a direct result of the marriage bar, which is only one of many discriminatory bars that were in place, 57,000 women do not qualify for the State pension.

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