Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Fitzgerald to the House. I commend Senator van Turnhout and her colleagues for putting forward this important motion which has produced an excellent debate. I am very happy to support the motion and to line up with everyone else in the House in support of it. We are united on this issue. The Minister has spoken eloquently about the culture of co-operation which is such an important part of making Ireland a cold house, as she described it, for this sort of child beauty pageant. Even that phrase, "beauty pageant", is hard to say because it sounds completely wrong to be speaking about children in the context of beauty pageants. We are all united on this motion which is in keeping with the notion of human rights for children. We united in support of the children referendum to amend the Constitution to insert recognition of rights for children, so too, we should unite on this motion. This debate shows the Seanad at its best.

Other speakers have spoken at length of the context and we are all conscious of the company from Texas which sought to run these pageants in Ireland. When I carried out a search of the media reports I noted that as recently as January the company was still saying it plans to run a pageant. It has not given up, although last November it said it would have a pageant at Christmas but this may have been a publicity spin.

Senator van Turnhout spoke about the high level of public support she has received for her stance. In her view, legislation might not be the appropriate manner to deal with this issue, that a legislative ban might not be appropriate. This is an important point. The Minister spoke about the difficulty with the legislative proposal in France which did not pass in all Houses of the French Parliament because of the real difficulty about how to define what is being banned. We would have the same difficulty. We all know what we mean by child beauty pageants and the Texan company falls squarely within that category but there might well be other events or companies seeking to fall outside of a definition through clever means. If we can proceed with the sort of great public support for these pageants not to be held in Ireland, if we can proceed on the basis that hotels will not welcome the business and if we can proceed with the rulings from Coimisiún le Rincí Gaelacha, this might be a better way forward. However, I welcome the Minister's announcement that she has commissioned research on this matter because it would be helpful to know how other countries have dealt with it and how they have approached the expression of the condemnation of these pageants.

Like other speakers I commend the Irish Hotels Federation and the hotels which refused to host the events last year. I also commend the An Coimisiún le Rincí Gaelacha for the ruling on the use of make up. I share Senator Moran's view that ten years of age seems very young. I contacted the commission and it has explained the rationale. The ruling makes a significant difference. It also pointed out to me that a number of CLRG feiseanna on both sides of the Atlantic were held last weekend, just after the ruling came into effect, and the motion was fully adhered to. This demonstrates the effectiveness of this type of voluntary approach.

I refer to two broader themes which have been raised during the debate. Senator van Turnhout, and the Minister alluded to the first theme, as did Senator Marie-Louise O'Donnell who spoke very eloquently about the disappearance of childhood. The Minister also spoke about the theft of childhood. All of us share a concern about the increasing sexualisation of childhood, the pseudo-adulthood, as Senator O'Donnell described it. We are very conscious of campaigns in England to prevent inappropriate use of logos and clothing styles for children. The Minister spoke about Retail Ireland's very welcome guidelines which are voluntary but very effective. I have a copy of the children's wear guidelines which are admirable, instructing that slogans and imagery on clothing must be age-appropriate, not sexually suggestive, not demeaning, derogative or containing political slogans or images that could be interpreted as such, that slogans deemed humorous should be tested and careful consideration should be given to what could be described as gender-specific slogans. I refer to the campaign about overly-gendered toys and clothes. On a lighter note, I refer to the young girl in England who wrote to Lego saying that she no longer wanted it to market the style of Lego friends and Lego for girls. My own daughters are big fans of "Star Wars" Lego which is gender-neutral. These campaigns are in keeping with the general theme of bringing childhood to an end too quickly.

As the Minister stated, childhood has only relatively recently been extended to age 18. The Constitutional Convention heard a powerful argument from a social worker who spoke against lowering the voting age to 16. His argument was that the social work profession and many others had fought very hard in recent decades to ensure that 18 years would become the age of adulthood and that childhood was not ended prematurely in any legal sense. I have recently written to the Minister for Justice and Equality to ask for a change in the current law which allows a legal marriage to be contracted at the age of 16 in certain circumstances. The legal age at which people should be allowed to marry should be 18 years as a minimum. We should not continue to allow the loophole that allows for marriage at 16 years. The provision is ripe for exploitation. I refer to a well-publicised recent High Court case in which the judge expressed concern about this exemption in the law whereby marriage can be legally contracted at 16 years.

The motion also raises issues about the treatment of girls in particular. The Irish Family Planning Association and the all-party Oireachtas group on reproductive health are hosting an exhibition which shows graphically in visual form the terrible oppression of women and young girls that still happens in many developing countries around the world, through practices such as female genital mutilation. It is appropriate during international women's week to remember that broader context for this motion. This very distasteful child beauty pageant is but one expression of oppression and discrimination against girls which means that girls have much less likelihood of access to education, to work and health rights, as their male counterparts.

It is a timely motion and I am delighted to support it.