Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to take part in this debate, and that the Minister is still here. I welcome his written speech, and he has set out various issues I hope I will get a chance to look at, including equality in the workplace, carers, children, etc. Then he goes on to use this opportunity to say yes, yes for the referendums. I might come back to that.

This is my eighth year doing statements, and I acknowledge some progress has been made in that time. I acknowledge the extra money that has gone into childcare. I acknowledge the progress with regard to the third national strategy on violence, and that a new agency has been set up. However, let us see what those words actually mean. We are putting more and more money into a for-profit system in the private market for children. We are putting less emphasis on the importance of stability in a home, whether that is run by a mother or father, and we are putting a huge effort into the privatisation of childcare with public money. We have done this with direct provision and housing, and we are doing it with childcare. I would love, and I would work with the Government, to push out a public childcare system that fathers and mothers could use as necessary. If one of them decides to stay at home for some time and use the public system, so be it, and vice versa.

I mentioned the progress with the agency that was set up. That agency has been set up against a background where 11 women died in violent circumstances in 2022, almost one woman a month. It was the worst year in a decade for violence against women. Between 1996 and 16 January 2024, 265 women died, 171 of these in their own homes, obviously by somebody they knew. Despite this, we have all of this diatribe and a narrative about foreigners when most of the murders are committed by husbands, partners or men we know.

We have failed to introduce legislation for homicide reviews, as we promised. We are having this debate in the context of women and narrowing the gender gap which is very much mixed up with race, disability and minority groups. All of it is tied together. When we look at that, and the Minister talks about the gender gap and reducing it, which I welcome, the most fundamental thing has been left out, and that is the importance of a home. Just yesterday or the day before in my office, I had a woman and her husband come in. They are parents. There was joy on their faces after getting a home, and what it meant to that family. The most basic thing, shelter and security for life, we have utterly failed to give.

In January, and the figures have gone up, there were 13,531 people homeless. Of those, 4,000 were women, and 3,036 were children. The UN Secretary General, who has been very forthcoming on different things, including Gaza, which I hope to get to in my last minute, said last year that global progress on women's rights is vanishing before our eyes and that, on the current track, gender equality is still 300 years away. In the Galway joint policing committee, of which I am a member, for Galway division, a year-on-year comparison of domestic abuse figures shows an increase of 19%, or 2,633 incidents. Notice that we talk about violence as domestic violence, as if to lessen it, and "incidents", rather than what it is: violence, assault, rape and so on. We use softer language.

Then we brought in the mother and baby home legislation, and we excluded almost as many as we included, or more, by an arbitrary decision of six months. It is totally unjust, and there is no equality there. It absolutely ignored the bond between mother and child. It was completely ignored.

It did not matter. I remember saying to Deputy Sherlock that he wasted six months of his life going to his new baby when the baby was crying because according to the Government's philosophy, the first six months do not matter. It is a tabula rasaand they are utterly ignored.

Then we come to the Women of Honour. From 1990 to today, it has taken us 34 years to listen to them. It has taken programmes, commissions and all sorts of things to force us to listen to what the women and the good men in the Army were telling us. Nobody listened to them.

On the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017, the Government is in breach of its statutory obligation. There has been no review of those vulnerable women. We have criminalised the men for the purchase of sex, endangering the women. There was a statutory obligation to carry out a review by 2020 but it was never carried out.

Next, on International Women's Day, we turn to Gaza and what do we find? The figures are just horrifying. I do not even want to read them out because it seems to lessen the enormity of it. I understand that the number of women and children killed is between 20,000 and 25,000. It takes courageous Israeli soldiers to kill that many women and children, and I say this tongue in cheek. An article intheGuardiannewspaper speaks of mothers giving birth with no medical help, babies without milk, one toilet between 500 people. It goes on to say that sometimes a disaster is so large it obscures its own details. The article gives all the details that we just do not want to talk about here. We have to preface everything by saying we absolutely condemn the attack by Hamas but what has happened in our name? The Government has stood - albeit intermittent - on very strong statements but with no action. On International Women's Day, I stand with the women in Gaza and in Ukraine. I deplore all wars.

If women go into politics, they should do so to make a difference and not just adopt the male patriarchal role which has happened in relation to this referendum, which does not state that the woman's role is in the home. Now we have parties and women adopting the patriarchal and patronising approach adopted by men, which we objected to, telling us that they know best and that this is for good. I say to everybody in this House, who is advocating for a "Yes" vote on the carer's question, that they read what they are saying "Yes" to. I will be saying a firm no on that one.

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