Fiona O'Loughlin (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish Senator Pauline O'Reilly well in her first day taking the Order of Business as Acting Leader of the House.

Tomorrow is Countess Markievicz's birthday and, to celebrate and commemorate that, Women for Election are launching a new campaign called "Count Her In". It is about supporting women to stand for election. They will be having a photo call outside the gates of Leinster House at 12.45 p.m. for all of the incumbent women in the Oireachtas - those of us who are fortunate and privileged enough to be here. Certainly, we should play our part in terms of supporting more women to come in. I wish them well with that campaign.

There is something that I want to raise and I have struggled with talking about it over the past few hours. We all know the grief and the sorrow that the whole country felt around the horrific murder of Ashling Murphy. We have all vowed and committed to do better and I have no doubt that we will. Hearing of the random attacks that have happened since then, in Cork, in Kilkenny and yesterday in St. Stephen's Green, brought me back to last summer when my 12-year-old niece was walking through St. Stephen's Green on a sunny day and was attacked by older men and beaten down to the ground. Luckily, she was not hurt physically, apart from bruises and that, but there is the emotional and psychological impact of that. It really worries me about our society. There is only so much that we can do at a legislative level in terms of criminal justice and policing. We need to make our streets safer with CCTV, lighting, etc. As was said in Hamlet "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark". We need to get to that misogyny and that feeling that a tiny minority have that they can control women and that they can show that anger. It is awful. It merits not going away from the issue; we need to talk about it again.

The other issue that I want to raise relates to the primary medical certificate. A commitment was given in the Dáil recently by the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, that a comprehensive review of the scheme would be undertaken to include a broader review of mobility supports for people with disabilities. Deputy Donohoe is working with the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy Roderic O'Gorman, on this. This important work has to be expedited. We know so many people whose choice in the way they live their lives, because of the impact of their disability, has been taken away. We all hear of these cases. I look forward to that being expedited and a strong message going from here.