Carol Nolan (Laois-Offaly, Independent) | Oireachtas source

There is something almost laughably absurd about these statements, particularly from the Government side and indeed from those on the so-called Opposition side. Here we are today celebrating International Women’s Day, and yet if I were to ask almost anyone on that side of the Chamber to define what a woman is, the look of panic would immediately arise. There has been a consistent policy over recent years to conflate the biological reality of a woman as an adult human female with gender identity. It has been said before that woman is not a costume that people can put on. We are a distinct, biologically determined member of the human race and our existence is being effectively erased through the deliberate introduction of dehumanising terminology. At the same time, we have a policy that actively facilitates male-born persons to be placed in female-only prisons, despite the fact they may be guilty of serious sexual assaults on women. We have the never-ending or ever-decreasing availability of spaces that are strictly female and woman only, such as changing rooms, domestic violence refuges and other intimate spaces.

Just last week I found out that Ireland's abortion rate is likely to exceed 10,000. This represents to my mind an epidemic of loss and harm against women and girls for whom, we are being told, abortion is the solution to all of their problems.

If we want to talk seriously about International Women's Day, then where better to start than by protecting the biological reality of women and our right to woman-only spaces. Until then, all of the Government's cheap rhetoric is simply the theatre of the absurd.

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