Violet-Anne Wynne (Clare, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for all information he provided and for being present for the wrap-up. As I said at the outset, I welcome that he has conducted a review into the equality Acts and, importantly, invited submissions. I very much welcome that the Bill was roundly recommended in those submissions as the best way to proceed and is, at least, a starting point.

I will speak to the Minister's proposed amendment. I thank the him for not opposing this incredibly important legislation and for providing a timeframe in which it can proceed to the next Stage. This has shown that the Government acknowledges the validity of this Bill and the necessity for its progression through this House. I strongly and respectfully urge the Minister to reconsider the timeframe of 18 months, however. I want to be clear that I am not contesting that it will take time; I am contesting the timeframe proposed, which, because it is so long, could be viewed by the public as kicking the can down the road.

As he will be well aware, this is not just a motion plucked out of thin air; it is a direct response to what was promised in the programme for Government and a response to 20 years of campaigning from fantastic organisations the length and breadth of the State. We are now halfway through the Decade of Centenaries. We have had parades, pageants, junkets and ceremonies yet we in this House are forgetting the commitment that was made in that Proclamation in 1916 to cherish all of the children of the nation equally. Every day the Government stalls on this issue flies in the face of that. I wholeheartedly urge the Minister to reconsider the way the amendment was proposed.

The Bill is more relevant now than ever as all reporting points to rising poverty levels. We are in the grip of a cost-of-living crisis. Ireland is one of the most expensive EU states for lighting, heating and housing. The CSO revealed earlier this week that 89,000 children were living in consistent poverty with 180,000 at risk of poverty in 2022. This is a marked increase of more than 46,000 children in poverty or at risk of poverty since last year. These children will grow up into a society that will shame and stigmatise them because of this unless the action is taken now.

Our fundamental duty as legislators is to serve the people and represent their best interests in this House. We need to ensure that our laws are reflective of the society we have been elected to represent and have been given a mandate to serve. It is vital that we progress this legislation as a matter of priority so that all the children in the cohort I mentioned do not grow up to repeat a cycle of generational poverty or, worse, become a statistic.

Thanks to the fantastic work of Clare Public Participation Network in its landmark report, Towards an Anti-Poverty Strategy for Clare, we have no official figures on poverty, fuel poverty, food property or child poverty on a county-by-county basis. The poverty figures are broken down by region and all the other categories have no official figures whatsoever. What we know for certain is that the mid-west is the most deprived and under-resourced region in the entire State. This is a scathing indictment of Government policy towards Clare, Limerick and north Tipperary. We need proper reporting by Government on these crucial poverty indicators. The passage of the Bill would have a knock-on effect to force the Government's hand on this so that cases taken under the new law would be justiciable. The Government has been able to hide this apathy toward our region by refusing to publish detailed statistics on the true state of the nation up to now. This must change so that we can ensure that we are receiving all the support that we as a county deserve. The Bill is the best approach to levelling the playing field for tens of thousands of people across Ireland. It has been endorsed by IHREC, Incorporated Law Society of Ireland, FLAC, NDA, Association for Higher Education Access & Disability, Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed, European Anti-Poverty Network, All Together in Dignity Ireland, Community Action Network, Independent Living Movement Ireland, Social Justice Ireland and a range of other NGOs, charities and civil organisations.

A commitment was made to look at adding this ground in the programme for Government. I welcome that the Minister has conducted the review into the equality Acts and invited submissions. That process has concluded and, hopefully, he and I and other Deputies will be able to work in tandem to see this Bill passed into law, and more rights and protections afforded to the people of our State as a result. I have a personal interest in this Bill because I come from a disadvantaged socioeconomic background. This is, therefore, something about which I am passionate.

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