Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Leader and the Cathaoirleach on the unveiling this afternoon. It was great to see.

Since it is International Women's Day, I will begin by paying a personal tribute to a hero of mine, Margaretta D'Arcy. She is a tremendous peace campaigner, activist, socialist, actor and writer whom I have regularly met for many years on the peace trail at Shannon Airport. I salute her among all other colleagues on this important day.

I wish to highlight a fantastic report on inequality by Unite the Union, entitled "Hungry Bellies are not Equal to Full Bellies: Exploring inequality and deprivation in Ireland". It is a devastating analysis of inequality and puts to bed some nonsensical statements that were made a few months ago in this Chamber about inequality decreasing. The statistics and analysis are all there, but I was struck by the personal testimonies of front-line workers like those in Cork Penny Dinners who told us that poverty was growing constantly and there was no equality where poverty was concerned. Inner City Helping Homeless cites an increase of more than 400% in the number of homeless children between 2015 and 2019. As such, it is timely for us to debate inequality. We could flesh out all of these details.

This weekend marked the anniversary of a dark day in the history of Limerick. One hundred years ago, a mayor and former mayor - Seoirse Clancy and Michael O'Callaghan - were murdered. In the early hours of 7 March, crown forces, including the RIC and the Black and Tans, burst into their homes and shot them dead in front of their families. At the same time on the south side of the city, Joseph O'Donoghue from County Westmeath, which is my home county, was removed from his house. His body was found the next morning with 18 bullet holes in it. This was a significant weekend for Limerick and one that we wanted to mark in many ways. Unfortunately, Covid has prevented us from doing so thus far. I hope that we will get the chance to do so later in the year, but the House should be sure of this - Limerick remembers its murdered martyrs.