Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

In my two minutes, I want to focus in. I have already wished everybody a happy International Women’s Day. The theme this year is to embrace equity, and it has been pointed out to us that equity allocates the resources and opportunities needed to get an outcome. While it is important to celebrate International Women’s Day, it is also important that that celebration does not obscure what we are talking about: the radical roots of International Women’s Day which started in 1911 and the changes that need to be made. At no stage can a woman collude with a system that is completely unequal in this country and throughout the world. It is too important. We need transformative change and women have to be the leaders in that transformative change. The UN General Secretary captures it in his words: “[P]rogress on women's rights is vanishing before our eyes”. This is the 21st century as we celebrate International Women’s Day, and on the current track, gender equality is 300 years away.

Sinead Gibney, chief commissioner of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, said in January 2023 that violence against women has reached crisis levels in Ireland. Therefore, while I appreciate we have made progress in terms of policies and legislation, we are far away from where we should be. Eleven women died in violent circumstances last year in this country, making that the worst year in a decade for violence against women, according to Women's Aid. Despite a programme for government commitment to legislation to introduce domestic homicide reviews, that legislation still has not happened. We still do not have something as basic as enough refuges in the country. We should not need them, but we do, and they are one basic step if we are seriously interested in making an equal society.

According to Safe Ireland, the third national strategy is more ambitious than its predecessors. It was late coming and although we have it now, Safe Ireland says it barely scratches the surface of what is a wide-scale social problem. Given the extent of the problem and decades of non-investment, regrettably, the upward trend of violence is likely to continue before the benefit or impact of these recent initiatives takes place.

We then perpetuate this with the mother and baby homes, where we exclude over 24,000 people on an arbitrary basis because of the six-month limit. Prior to six months, it is said, people know nothing and do not suffer.

With regard to the Women of Honour report, trust is of the essence. I ask the Minister and the Minister of State where is the report in regard to the Women of Honour.

I want to acknowledge my colleague, Deputy Joan Collins, who because of time pressure will not get to speak. I want to acknowledge her solidarity, and my own, with all women who struggle. I will finish with a quote from James Connolly that she has brought to my attention: “None so fitted to break the chains as they who wear them, none so well equipped to decide what is a fetter.” No doubt about it, women are still in chains, physically and metaphorically. We cannot talk about an equal society until we have that transformative change which, in the end, will also help to save the planet.

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