Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputies for their contributions to our statements on International Women's Day. This is the fourth time I have had the opportunity to deliver the speech on behalf of the Government and to listen to Deputies. During those four years there has been criticism that not enough has been done. There is always more for every government to do. There is more for this Government to do and there will be more for the governments that follow.

As this issue is focused on a number of specific areas, I have had the opportunity to chart progress over the last four years. As Deputy Bacik said, that progress is incremental, but there has definitely been progress on a number of the areas that were debated when I first responded to statements on this issue in March 2021 up to today. I look at a number of these areas and at the efforts the Government has undertaken to make Ireland a safer place for women in terms of the work the Minister for Justice, Deputy McEntee, has done with the creation of a new domestic violence agency. This was suggested in the programme for Government. We said we would do it in conjunction with the NGOs working in the sector. They are the people who know best what is happening on the front line and know best the deficiencies in terms of support for victims of domestic violence.

When I came into office, the funding for domestic, sexual and gender based violence, DSGBV, fell within the remit of my Department through Tusla. I remember in budget 2021 celebrating getting more than €20 million that year. This year, Cuan's budget will be €43 million, so funding to tackle domestic violence has almost doubled so far in the lifetime of this Government. The new agency has more work to do, including getting more spaces in the Deputy's area and in my area. We have a group dedicated to doing so rather than having responsibility spread across a range of Government Departments and State agencies as used to be the case.

For the first time, we have paid leave for victims of domestic violence. We have new legislation for offences like non-fatal strangulation and the like. This is an area where we have made significant progress.

As Minister with responsibility for children, I believe we have made significant progress on childcare in making it more affordable. This benefits everyone, mams and dads, but we recognise that it particularly benefits mams. We are making it more sustainable for people who run childcare businesses. Deputy Connolly spoke about this. Yes, some of them are small private businesses. Many of them are small private businesses, led by female entrepreneurs. We are also better paying childcare professionals. Some 73% of them saw a pay increase at the start of 2022, again because the Government put more money in in terms of core funding. By next September, childcare will be 50% cheaper for parents. More money has been put into the sector and the staff in that sector are being better paid.

On health, we have been able to advance significant areas. We have made abortion services more readily available across the country, with services in 17 out of 19 maternity hospitals now but we have to get it up to all 19, which will happen by the end of this year. We have introduced free contraception for women between the ages of 17 and 31. We have also provided a range of health services targeted specifically at women. For the first time, endometriosis services are available. We have set up special menopause clinics and ambulatory gynaecology clinics. These are all innovations designed to tackle health issues for women and to do so earlier, so we can have better health outcomes for women of all ages.

We have been able to address significant issues in the workplace, whether introducing gender-pay-gap legislation and for the first time forcing individual firms to talk about the difference in pay between their male and female employees. It is not as some national aggregate but it allows us to have a degree of specificity in terms of various workplaces. On work life balance, we have brought in flexible and remote working and additional leave to support the caring roles both parents need to take on.

A number of Deputies spoke about the upcoming referendums. In the context of the referendum on the family, I had the opportunity, as Minister in my Department, to speak during many of the debates we had on the report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes. Many of the Deputies who are present spoke on those issues as well. When the report came out, we had much discussion on what had allowed the mother and baby institutions and the county home institutions to operate in the way they did for decades in our country. There were many views: it was the State; it was the Government; it was politicians; it was the Catholic Church; it was other churches; it was society; it was men; and it was a combination of all of these things.

One thing that has always struck me is that those women and their children at that time were not regarded as a family. Irish law, including our Constitution, did not recognise that as a family relationship. They did not then and they still do not today. I had the great honour and privilege to be able to get married last August and my best woman on the day has been in a relationship for 15 years. She has a five-year-old daughter, but her relationship with her partner and their child is not considered a family under our Constitution. I have said in debates in this House before and I will say it again: it is offensive that we do not recognise these relationships that are so good, loving, important and basic to how our society operates as a family within the basic legal text of our country. We will have the ability to do that on Friday. We can do it in a way that no other person's rights are in any way impacted: not succession, not taxation and not inheritance. None of the rights that people already have will be impacted by the change to place "durable relationships" within our Constitution and give them the recognition that they, along with married couples and their children, form a family.

It is not often that we have the opportunity to widen our recognition and widen a number of constitutional protections through such a small measure as putting an X on the box that says "Tá". There is a small body of constitutional protections in Article 41, but they are protections and rights that often benefit some of the most vulnerable families in our country. We will have the opportunity to look at what has happened in our country's past, reflect on it and see how we can make our country's future different and, particularly, how we can make it different for families. In the same vein, we will have an opportunity next Friday to look at what our Constitution says about women and mothers and whether we think it is acceptable to speak of their "neglect" of their duties in the home, as Article 41.2.2° does at the moment. For me, it is the word "neglect" and the sheer judgmental nature of that particular word that we can and should remove from our Constitution. We should replace it with a meaningful provision that recognises care in all its different forms.

I thank Deputies for their contributions today. I will conclude on this point. I would particularly like to thank Deputies for highlighting the ongoing suffering - although that is almost too small a word for it - of women and children in Gaza. Like other Deputies, I join in their calls for an immediate ceasefire, the release of all hostages and, importantly, the provision of large quantities of humanitarian aid to the people who are starving across Gaza. I thank Deputies for their contributions on International Women's Day.

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