Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister might permit me to quote from a poem by Eva Gore-Booth because she was part of the suffrage movement in the UK at the same time as her sister played such a key role in Ireland. In a poem called Reincarnation, and she was a very good poet, she states:

I seek with humble care and toil

The dreams I left undreamed, the deeds undone,

To sow the seed and break the stubborn soil,

It is an acknowledgement of how much more needed to be done, the fact that the soil that needs to be broken is stubborn and the challenges that remain to be faced. Right now, women in Ireland across all sectors are rising to that challenge.