Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

In rising to mark the day I wish everybody a happy International Women’s Day, but International Women’s Day is also about people raising the demand and raising the voice. For many women and many marginalised women in Ireland, including those women who are facing homelessness, it is not a happy International Women's Day. I am very proud of the work of the Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality. The action plan produced by the committee is based on the 45 transformative, visionary and ambitious recommendations of the citizen's assembly and will not just lead to nice examples or lovely stories on International Women's Day, but actually to the social, systemic transformation that we need.

We need to really accelerate and massively change our society so it is centred on equality. This blueprint has been given to us by citizens and carried forward by the cross-party group. We need to deliver all of the recommendations that have been made with regard to changing our society in a massive way. We are not talking about examples anymore or good examples, we are talking about systemic change.

One of the great opportunities for systemic change is in changing our Constitution so that it actually really does do better at representing all of our society.In that context, I welcome the commitment to a referendum made today. It is something I campaigned for long before I entered politics. It should not be a simplistic thing where we simply remove the sentence we do not like but a recognition of care. That is what the citizens called for, very clearly. They called for the recognition of the contribution of care made by everybody in society. It is important to acknowledge care as the lifeblood of society in a way that is meaningful. We need to take it away from women's roles being used as a tool to box women in and instead spread care out as something that everybody in society values.

I want to highlight something very important, which is the other recommendations. We have not heard the detail on them yet. There were other constitutional recommendations from the citizens that link with this. That was very clear. They also wanted to make sure all families were recognised in the Constitution. It is not just about recognising care, be it a woman or man who is giving the care, but also about recognising all of the families who are part of our fabric as a society. At the moment, the Constitution does not give equal recognition to all families. Some 98.9% of the citizens voted in favour of giving the protections given to the family to all families. When we look to the legacy of how Ireland has treated lone-parent families, and unmarried mothers in particular, this is a great opportunity to ensure every family in Ireland is recognised and valued in our Constitution.