Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Nearly all the Senators touched on the issue of Ukraine. It is something that the Government and, more importantly, the entirely country are united on in terms of our open and generous response. Almost 10,000 pledges of support have come in through the Red Cross portal in the past number of days. Irish women and Irish men are saying what they will do, for instance, giving a spare room or providing meals. That is an enormous support. I hope that the Ukrainian ambassador can draw some comfort from that degree of solidarity.

I have had the opportunity to meet one or two families who came to my Department seeking to register here and heard at first-hand some of those stories. There was one child just lying on the couch in our reception he was so exhausted. In fleeing the crisis, the family had driven from Ukraine to Ireland. The child was not playing. He was literally lying there. I could sense the exhaustion. I could sense the exhaustion in his parents. They were slumped on the seats. It is so important that we as a country meet all our EU requirements - they are generous requirements - but also our humanitarian requirements in terms of providing for Ukrainian refugees.

Assuming this conflict goes on as we must, that will cause pressures in all our communities. It will be up to the Government to work to alleviate those pressures but it will be up to all of us to provide leadership. Sometimes the outpouring of support can be strong at the start but when things get more difficult we will have to be there to provide leadership and say that this is the right thing to do, this is a necessary thing to do as part of our own humanity and this is something that we must do.

Senator Curry referred to the event that was hosted by the Muslim Sisters of Éire yesterday. Our focus day, yesterday and this week is on women but we also have to recognise the issues of intersectionality. There are women, as in every part of society, who because of other factors are more at risk or who have faced greater degrees of discrimination, for instance, women who have, either themselves or have a child with a disability, women who are the sole carers of their children, women who are members of the Traveller community, women who are black, women who are immigrants and transpeople. The intersectionality of this day is important. Many of those issues fall within my Department. My colleagues in the National Traveller Women's Forum, in particular, Maria, would murder me if I did not talk about the intersectionality on a day such as International Women's Day.

Reflecting on when we come together this time next year to speak on these issues, if there are a few things in that idea of us making progress it is the work led by the Minister for Justice, Deputy McEntee, but with me and other Departments feeding in as well in terms of the creation of a new domestic, sexual and gender-based violence, DSGBV, agency to focus all our response to DSGBV, to begin the process - it will only be beginning - of providing additional refuge space around the country, and the work I will be doing on delivering DSGBV leave.

There will be significant further steps in terms of the affordability of childcare. This is a long-term project. We put a huge amount of extra money into it in this year's budget. That is not enough and the Government does not believe that is enough. There is real agreement across budget that more needs to be done in that context, that it is essential that breastfeeding breaks would be available for long periods of time and that we will be undertaking the work of giving a meaningful response to the recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly. Being a multiplicity of recommendations, everyone accepts they will take time. If we can be measured on those, that is worthwhile.

Senator Ward spoke about the importance of men not stepping back from these issues. I hope this time next year it will be judged that I and my Department have not stepped back and we have continued to advance these issues, that we can continue to see steady change in terms of Government policy and Ireland's approach to these issues, but always realising that the change that we need to make in terms of society's treatment of women is a systems change and that can be delivered.