Pippa Hackett (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I will share my time with Senator Garvey. Before I begin, I would also like to pay tribute to Senator David Norris as he retires from political life. I did not have an opportunity earlier. I pay particular tribute to his work to advance LGBT+ rights in Ireland despite the great personal cost. As the first openly gay person elected to public office, he smashed a glass ceiling so that others could follow. He has been a champion for human rights, for his local community in Dublin city centre and for our collective built and cultural heritage. These are not the main reasons he will remain with me when he walks out the doors today. To paraphrase Maya Angelou, people will never forget how you made them feel. It was his warmth and his sense of fun and camaraderie that will remain with me when I think about our interactions over the years.I thank Senator Norris and wish him a retirement of curiosity, beauty and mischief. Go-néirí an bóthar leis and may the sun always be on his back.

I also thank Senator Norris for his support for "Yes" vote in the upcoming referendums. The referendums that will take place on 8 March are important, and I will be voting "Yes" and "Yes" to change the Constitution. As Members are aware, the first referendum proposes to amend Article 41 of the Constitution. It does so to support and value the family and to widen the concept of the family to reflect today's Ireland. Many families in today's Ireland extend beyond a family based on marriage. We have one-parent families and cohabiting couples and their children. We all know these families. Some of us are these families. They form part of our wider networks of kinship, neighbours and communities. The current language in the Constitution excludes these families, however. The current wording of Article 41 and, indeed, some of the amendments proposed by fellow Senators, bring to mind Oscar Wilde's statement that to define is to limit. The Government's proposed wording is a fairer and more honest reflection of the Ireland we have become.

The second referendum proposes the removal of texts on the role of women in the home and would insert a new Article 42B into the Constitution to recognise and value family caring. While I always welcome constructive debate to ensure that all perspectives and unintended consequences have been considered, I have been more than taken aback by some of the opposition to the proposal to change the language in the Constitution on women and their duty in the home. Not only is the language outdated, it was inappropriate when it was first proposed back in the 1930s. At that time, it met with opposition from champions of equality such as Professor Mary Hayden and Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington. In 1937, Kathleen Clarke was one of several women TDs who took issue with de Valera's new Constitution because of its anti-women attitudes. I have heard and considered the argument that the current wording does not confine women's choices in any way, not even psychologically. The proponent of this perspective happens to be a colleague of ours here in the House. For what it is worth, I do not believe the majority of men presume to tell women what does or does not impact on them psychologically. I have spoken at length with a number of women on this issue, and I know it is quite personal to many. One woman recounted her introduction to Bunreacht na hÉireann in national school at the age of 11 or 12. She recalls the attention resting on Article 41 and a feeling of intense nausea as the implication of what those words meant dawned on her. That was 40 years ago. We do need men to be involved in this debate, however. We need men to recognise the value of care that is not based on gender, not only for the girls and womenfolk in their lives but also because many of them, boys and men, are playing vital caring roles. We need to have those roles valued in the Constitution.

These referendums have been likened to blind man's buff, a game many Senators may recall from childhood. It is a game of catch, where one child is blindfolded and spun around in an attempt to disorientate them before they are released on the group. It is the perfect analogy because what is at play here is an attempt to derail a simple and necessary update to archaic and sexist language through spin and disorientation.

I recently read the memoir of Des O'Malley, a man whose experience through more than three decades spanned roles in government, opposition and the formation of a new political party. Although our politics and opinions did not always align - he proposed the abolition of this House, for example - I have great admiration for his commitment to a Constitution that would reflect a tolerant and pluralist Ireland. In his memoir, O'Malley attributes much of Ireland's social development, particularly in the context of attitudes towards women, to our membership of the EU. He wrote that this is important and that the transformation in our attitudes to women, issues of equality and simple fairness might have happened by then under the pressures of feminist advance but it would have been a much slower and, he suspected, more painful process politically if we had not had the enlightenment thrust upon us. Enlightenment thrust on us is not enlightenment, however; it is compliance. In 2024, we can do better. It is as true now as it was then that these are issues of equality and simple fairness.

In 1987, as leader of the Progressive Democrats, O'Malley proposed that the very article we are discussing today needed to be changed.He asked whether it was true that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.

The theme of International Women's Day 2024, which not by accident is the same date as the referendum, is to inspire inclusion. The International Women's Day website reads, "When we inspire others to understand and value women's inclusion, we forge a better world." To every person eligible to vote in Ireland on 8 March I say take the blindfold off and find your target for two strong marks in the "Yes" boxes for a Constitution where care and family are valued beyond the constraints of the perspective of a patriarchal society. That time has come and gone.