Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

It added to the positive feelings most people felt last night.

I welcome other positive news that was, perhaps, lost in yesterday’s budget, namely that, for the first time, Ireland has been invited to participate in the British Armistice day event and that our ambassador in Britain, Dan Mulhall, will lay a wreath at the Cenotaph in London on Sunday, 9 November. This is a very welcome development and marks the contribution by 200,000 Irish men and women who went to Britain during the First World War and whose deaths had largely gone unmarked here for far too long. It is important that we are participating in it. In this context, I ask the Leader for a debate in the week that follows it in November, when there will be commemorations of the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, on the decade of commemorations. I also welcome the increased funding in the budget that will pay for the commemorations. We might have the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Deputy Heather Humphreys here for it.

I commend the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, which will have an all-Ireland conference on midwifery tomorrow. I will be glad to address it on pregnancy pathways. Many of us have been concerned about the recent case of Philomena Canning, the withdrawal of insurance indemnity for a midwife involved in supporting women in home births and the lack of choice for women in terms of options in giving birth in hospitals. I was among those who participated in the show of support outside Leinster House last week.