Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. I did not speak on the earlier constitutional Bill. I spoke on it on Second Stage. I indicated that I was fully behind that. I will be voting for that amendment. I have serious concerns about this one. I will start with FLAC's concerns, which have not been dealt with. I know we are speaking to a combination of amendments here, all of which seek to make the amendment to the Constitution stronger and to put an obligation on the Government to give meaning to its words.

Of all the submissions I have read, all of which have been extremely helpful, I have found that FLAC put the spotlight on its concerns and none of them has been addressed. The first is the lack of clarity about the amendments, what they are seeking to achieve and what they will mean in practical terms for law and policy. That has not been answered. The second is that, "The amendments (as currently worded) will not deliver meaningful enforceable rights and stronger constitutional protection for women, families and carers - as well as other groups who experience discrimination and disadvantage, such as people with disabilities. Instead, they are focussed on symbolic recognition alone." The Minister is shaking his head. I will not waste my time trying to stop him shaking his head but I fully agree that this is a symbolic change that is absolutely empty.

I will go out on a limb and say that I would prefer the existing wording, which is not gender neutral and is of its time. I will give some reasons why I would prefer that. I would have more hope of action under the existing wording in the Constitution than I have with this. The third concern of FLAC is, "The wordings diverge significantly from the recommendations made by the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality and the Joint Oireachtas Committee". I thank the citizens' assembly and the joint committee for all of their work. By and large, it has been absolutely ignored with this symbolic changing of wording in the Constitution that is unhelpful. It has been pointed out that two have been conflated or put together, which should not have happened. Those are the removing of language and the putting in of caring, with no choice for anybody. I have serious difficulty with promoting this referendum. I have repeatedly classified myself as a very strong feminist. I would use many other adjectives but this is an insult. It is a double insult to hold it on International Women's Day.

I thank the Library and Research Service, LRS, as usual, for producing its Bill digest. I will give the context and the history, thanks to the LRS and my own knowledge and work in the office. It has succinctly set out the background to the changes. I am backing the amendments that have been tabled and striving to make this better. It is unforgivable that we are here today when we are really talking about decisions to change this that go back to 1993. The LRS has carefully set out for us that, in 1993, the Second Commission on the Status of Women recommended the deletion of Article 41.2.2°. It did not happen, of course. We then move forward to 1996, when the Constitution Review Group recommended deleting the article and replacing it. I will not go into all the wording because of time constraints, but it actually gives wording. The theme through all of this is that they all use "shall endeavour", so I am not sure where "strive" came from.

In 1997, the year my second son was born, the First Progress Report of the All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution recommended deleting the article and replacing it. Fast forward to 2006, which is a big gap. The Tenth Progress Report of the All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution recommended amending Articles 41.2.1° and 41.2.2° and set out why. It gave alternative wording. In 2016, a Government task force was set up. It set out a number of options. It gave out what should go in. Putting an obligation on the Government did not happen, of course. In 2018, we got a ministerial announcement, just like that. There was really no back-up to it. It was to delete the article but nothing was put forward to replace it.

That is the background to how we are here today. I understand pre-legislative scrutiny was waived but I am open to correction on this. It should not have been waived. I understand the committee agreed to that. That was a bad decision. I am going out on a limb here. That is the place to tease out all of this, to look at the background and at all of the issues that were put forward since 1993, and to come up with some wording.

In the context of carers, we are ostensibly taking out wording that is unacceptable, which places the woman in the home and gives her a particular role. We have spoken many times about all the other parallel developments that happened in the 20th century, when we had the whole architecture of containment, which we have spoken about that many times. That did not have to happen, of course. A different interpretation could have been taken of that very narrow wording in the Constitution. I might get a chance to come back to that.

Family Carers Ireland has been mentioned many times today.

I thank its members for their work. They have a progress report on what has happened regarding Government action from the programme for Government. They identified 18 commitments. I am sure the Minister is very familiar with this. They are very good. They are very positive. They give the Government a good progress report for three. Let me absolutely back that up, particularly in respect of the Minister, Deputy Humphrey's, announcement about pensions for carers and other matters. They clearly highlight that. That is three of 18. Of the other 15, four received a regressive mark, as they are going backwards; six received no score; and five received a score of limited progress. That is outlined by Family Carers Ireland, as well as giving us all the details about the facts and figures. Those facts have been quoted here today. We have almost 300,000 family carers. It is a conservative figure in relation to carers on unpaid leave. I understand other figures put it much higher at almost 500,000 unpaid carers.

What does the OECD tell us? Let us look at what care does for society, states and all of us. Even if carers were given the basic hourly minimum wage, the OECD tells us it would amount to 9% of global gross domestic product. That 9% is a very low valuation put on caring. One would think at this point, after the Covid-19 pandemic and given the transformative change we need in this society, that we would be recognise the invaluable work done by carers in our society, putting a value on it and putting an obligation on the State to deliver on that obligation. Where is that transformative change? An empty symbolic gesture will go into the Constitution without any obligation whatsoever on the Government.

Women's organisations are trying their best to be positive because we have so little expectation, due to different Governments. The women's organisations that have fought gallantly to bring equality are saying, "This is good, but...". We have TDs - I understand where they are coming from - saying "Yes" and let us lay out the stall. This is the time to lay out the stall or not change the Constitution. That is not what is happening. We are going backwards.

The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, gave its report in July 2023, which is well worth reading because it puts context and value on care, stating "Despite the immense value of care, it has been conceptualised by the Irish State as a commercial ‘product’ and been undervalued, unrecognised, and often low paid or unpaid." That is a direct quote from Kathleen Lynch, emeritus professor, who has done marvellous work on the commercialisation and privatisation of care. She and other writers have highlighted the difficulties and consequences of that. We have seen it lately in relation to nursing homes and the report by the ESRI that now tells us more than 80% of long-term residential care is provided by the private sector. We needed the ESRI to tell us what we have been saying here for years. Please stop privatising the care profession. Now nursing homes are almost 40% or 50% reliant on money coming from equity funds. When we have the next recession, bang go our nursing homes.

It is the same with care. We see the privatisation of care again and again. The IHREC report states that, defined as a product, care is removed from its relational nature and this institutionalises commercial norms. It goes on to state that "seeking to make a profit from care is antithetical to its values".

The impact of the current flawed system is stark, with a growing crisis in the care sector and resulting negative outcomes across society...In order to ensure social and political justice, public policy-making must be grounded in the ethics and value of care and prioritise human rights-based solutions.

We saw during the Covid-19 pandemic, what happened when human rights-based solutions were not prioritised. We saw the direct consequences of the privatisation of the care of the elderly and we see it on a daily basis, with people struggling to care for loved ones who are on the spectrum of disability. They are struggling and being met by the Government response that it provides millions of homecare hours.We know on the ground that they are struggling and up all night. We hear insulting language from the Taoiseach who talks about being there for the people who get up early in the morning when some people do not even get to bed because they are caring for nothing or next to nothing. This was a golden opportunity to change that and to say the privatisation and commercialisation of care is not in the interest of our economy. It was time to value it and bring in the transformative change. That has not happened.

IHREC is taking this from a lot of writers and clearly points out that "market driven solutions can no longer be the answer [yet] the care sector in Ireland has become increasingly privatised and commercialised, with State resources being directed towards for-profit companies" to help them make a profit. It goes on to make many recommendations which are relevant but I will not go into them here.

I will go back to the wording in the Constitution and finish by looking at it for a little while. I agree, which the Ministers might find surprising, with the amendments, or certainly the tenor of them, tabled by the Rural Independent Group, Deputy Mattie McGrath and his colleagues. Why do I say that? The Constitution tells us that the mother should not be obliged to work outside the home because of economic necessity. Certainly, the wording needs to be changed and the consequences of zoning in on a woman and the parallel developments in Irish society, by a male dominated patriarchal society were totally unacceptable. However, the concept behind it is the kernel of what this debate should be about and it has not been mentioned. No carer, whether a mother, father or whatever category they work under as the primary carer in a house, should be forced out through economic necessity to a different or additional job. That was the kernel of the article the Government is now changing in a very pathetic manner, perhaps without recognising that there was huge scope in that article, as judges have pointed out. Mrs. Justice Susan Denham did so more than 23 years ago in a dissenting judgment, pointing out that the article placing the woman in the home and giving that recognition in the Constitution was doing something valuable and could be interpreted in a modern day context, not to only apply to a woman, but put an actual value on the work. She is not the only judge who has referred to this. Hers was a dissenting judgment. Other judges have expressed surprise that the existing article has really never been tested.

Given a choice of what the Government is proposing in this referendum and what is there, I would take my chances with what is there and leave it to the Judiciary in an appropriate case to interpret it in a modern capacity that does not limit the recognition to a mother but recognises the value of care without which society and the economy cannot function. That is what the debate should be about. That is what the debate should have been on pre-legislative scrutiny. I am now left with a decision to make, which I have almost made, unfortunately. I will strive to keep an open mind. The existing article is stronger because of the possible interpretation by the courts if it were tested, than what the Government is proposing which takes away any obligation on the State to do something. It has gone away from the citizens' assembly and the Oireachtas joint committee. They have simply been ignored. The Government has put this in and it is absolutely unacceptable.

See this speech in context