Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I wish to address some of the points made today on the two amendments. On the Article 41 change, on the broadest equality guarantee, I always believed it was wrong to narrow down equalities. You cannot pick and choose your equalities. The broadest possible equality guarantee seemed to me to be the most obvious and important thing to have and retain exactly as it is.

I was glad to hear speakers such as Deputy Bríd Smith refer to the questions of doubling down and not removing women. It is very important to state the provision to remove the reference to women’s duties in the home, as read out by the Minister, is not removing from women from the Constitution – far from it. In fact, Article 45 still refers to men and women equally, but it does so in the context of equality. It refers to them as together and equal and not in the very outdated way the State currently refers to women. The current provision refers to "her life within the home ... without which the common good cannot be achieved" and to the State ensuring women "shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home". I assure the Chair that I have neglected my duties in the home today and probably every other day that I have been in the Dáil, and I am not really that bothered about that. It absolutely needs to come out of the Constitution.

We talked earlier about the question of durability and the evolution of the family forum. It is worth thinking about this and how we thought about families and related evolving concepts. In 2009, Dermot Ahern brought through the legislation on civil partnership and cohabitation. It was extraordinary in that brought together in one Act every family law Act, employment rights Act and succession Act, or any Act you could possibly have that related to an other or spouse, and included the phrase "married or a civil partner". Most extraordinarily, it excluded children entirely as though neither partner might have a child. This position was taken because of the need to protect the balance in respect of the marriage in the Constitution as it then was. It was an active piece of work to ignore the existence of children in families with couples who were not married. The referendum under discussion would change that very considerably.

There was a big change in this context in 2015 with the Children and Family Relationships Act. It did the exact opposite of the 2009 legislation. It took the 2009 legislation and inserted "children" all the way through, fixing the 2009 problem. It was asked at the time what changed, because the underlying provision on the family in the Constitution did not change. The 2012 amendment to insert rights of children into the Constitution was what changed. It made children express constitutional rights-holders of their own, and consequently their rights to family life had to be conceived very differently. It was the argument on this, with which I agreed and which fortunately won, that enabled us to get the Children and Family Relationships Bill through the Attorney General’s office in time to enact it before the marriage equality referendum. It took the question of children out of that referendum and enabled us to pass it without distraction.

The 2023 iteration of thinking about families is a further extension.

If you look back 20 years ago, we were not having any of these conversations. We are now having a conversation where we have not just recognised civil partnership, we recognise cohabitation and the rights of children as individual rights holders. We recognise them now as part of married same-sex couples and civil partnerships. We recognise that as a family form. We are now taking this extension further and actively placing on an equal basis children of parents who are not married and treating those families in the same way. We do not need to account for it slightly differently in terms of durability. It is worth thinking about that in a slightly different way as a further extension and perhaps not the end point.

I will speak directly to the care piece. The interim report described care within the home, family and the wider community. As I said earlier, I always had a difficulty with the concept of the wider community because I could not place it constitutionally, namely, how it existed at all constitutionally and how it could be placed specifically with that reference and not a lot of other references that were not care-based references - that it was not something else. My recollection is that the committee pulled back from that position and that it was not something we pushed for in the end because it was incapable of being defined.

Family care and supporting care in general is a very strong political philosophy for me. I have been a family carer caring for a very sick child for a number of years. I remain alive to the changing circumstances that could require me to go back to that full-time caring role. I was co-chair of the family carers group before I became Minister of State along with Deputies Pauline Tully, Marian Harkin and Niamh Smyth so my entire focus has been around care. I advocated for a massive extension in eligibility for carer's allowance with the Minister for Social Protection, which was delivered over two budgets. Again, I do not think this is where that stops. That is a progressive realisation of the value of care. The extension of the allowance and pensions is part of the progressive realisation of a concept we value, that shows our compassion and that is valued more broadly.

However, there is something different about the professionalisation of care. Deputy Bacik spoke to this earlier and mentioned that the unions were not happy that the profession of caring was not recognised. I am paraphrasing slightly. However, I do not think this works. When we look at the carer's allowance, we are talking about care within a family and relationships. We are not talking about the professionalisation of that and we cannot have a read across to other professions be they under the brief of the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, or that of the Minister for Education such as teachers or other therapists providing different types of care. It is different and it is important that we have the family piece.

When I read the amendment itself, I take a much more expansive view. It states that the State recognises that the provision of care by members of a family to one another by reason of the bonds that exist among them gives to a society a support without which the common good cannot be achieved and shall strive to support that provision. The phrase "shall strive to" is found elsewhere in the Constitution. It is in the directors of social principles policy but it is not justiciable. This is a justiciable provision, which is so different and enables that progressive realisation.

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