Sharon Keogan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is no secret that many people think this Bill and the referendums that will be held on foot of it are a gigantic waste of money and time. I am sick to the teeth of this Government frittering away its time and resources on complete non-issues while continuing policies that inflame the actual problems of this country that people want to see fixed. The Government is putting these dual referendums to the people to see what they want. I wonder what would happen if we asked members of the public what they actually want to vote on. If we asked the entire country to choose one thing the Government is doing that they would change, how many people would respond, "Gosh, we need to get it to alter this pesky Constitution, as it has been holding me back psychologically". How many would kill for the chance to vote on immigration, housing or the HSE? Of course, that would be giving up too much power to the people. They must only be allowed to nod or to shake their heads at whatever the Government serves them up, and sometimes not even that. We are left with this Bill, which will be pushed through this House, as it was in the Dáil, by the Executive's control over the Legislature, and which I hope will be rejected by the people. The Minister wants to remove the only instance of the words "woman" and "mother" from the Constitution, after which we will not get a mere mention in the foundation document setting out our rights. Women do not want to be reduced to non-gender language.

The public has been fed a cock-and-bull story about this referendum being about how the woman's place is in the home, feeding into the popular misconception that the Constitution contains some provision along these lines when, in fact, we know that what exists is a protection for women who wish to work in the home and serve this country by raising a family. Despite the fact that the Government recently set up a national counter-disinformation strategy working group, this identification of misinformation or disinformation appears to only work one way. There is no outlet for citizens to point out that the misinformation on this referendum is coming from the Government itself. The establishment narrative has been that this is a historical chance to get rid of sexist and outdated wording in the Constitution, give wider recognition to carers and modernise the definition of a family following the now very tired Government playbook of portraying itself as being the leading global figure on the cutting edge of any and all progressive causes. I, for one, do not view the erasure of women as something worthy of being progressed.

The current wording of the Irish Constitution recognises that women and mothers play an important role in the home. This does not negate the vital role men and fathers play in the home, nor does it confine women to the home or tie us to the kitchen sink, dishwasher or cooker. As Senator McDowell pointed out, this article in no way diminishes any choice for mothers. Rather, it casts the obligation on the State to amplify women's free choice on whether to work outside the home by assisting those who freely choose to work in the home and would otherwise be forced, against their wishes, to engage in labour outside the home.

We have had a female President for 21 of the last 33 years. Women in this country have every freedom to develop rewarding careers in areas that can be freely chosen. Much ado has been made about the presence of this article in our Constitution existing as some sort of background psychological radiation, polluting the air and causing women to self-limit in their employment aspirations. This is complete rubbish and I challenge anyone to find a single woman who would say that the existence of Article 41.2 has limited her in any way. The current wording in the Constitution gives women and mothers a solid foundation for wider recognition in Irish society and provides a basis on which to strengthen current laws that support women and mothers in their work, including in the home. Former Chief Justice Susan Denham stated the following in a 2001 case:

Article 41.2 does not assign women to a domestic role. Article 41.2 recognises the significant role played by wives and mothers in the home. This recognition and acknowledgement does not exclude women and mothers from other roles and activities.

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The work is recognised because it has immense benefit for society.

If the public at large knew what is actually contained in Article 41.2, women the length and breadth of the country would be clamouring for it not to be retained but implemented. A 2017 survey of Irish mothers found that, given the choice, 62% of them would prefer to stay at home to raise their children. How many women in Ireland are engaged in labour due to economic necessity to the neglect of their duties in the home? There are hundreds and thousands of them, at least. These mothers are forced to work because the economic policies of successive Governments have made it impossible for a family to survive on a single income. Many mothers are expressing the view that they wished they had known about this protective guarantee to allow them to stay at home.

Mothers are denied a choice of staying at home with their children because they cannot afford to do so. Rather, they must work, only to be forced to use a significant chunk of their earnings to pay for childcare, employing a stranger to mind their own children whom they would much rather mind themselves. It is a bonkers system. That is what women are forced to do through economic necessity because the Government is not abiding by the Constitution. Now, rather than supporting women who wish to work in their homes, the Government wants to remove the obligation to them and water down the Constitution to say it will "strive" to support carers. I do not view this as progress. It is another cynical step towards attempting to erase sex difference in society because progressives have deemed the innate difference between men and women to be problematic. The Government should step up to the plate rather than lowering the bar. It should abide by its constitutional obligations to support mothers in the home. It could spend the €20 million and a large portion of the money it will give to kowtowing NGOs on examining financial supports for mothers to allow them to remain in the home, for example, some form of universal basic income, tax reliefs for husbands or increasing the one-parent family payment on a per-child basis.

Like the rest of the West, Ireland is in the grip of an unmentioned fertility crisis. The birth rate has decreased every year since 2008. It now stands at 1.78 births per woman, well below the replacement rate of 2.1. The birth rate has more than halved since 1973. This is a population implosion timebomb and the Government is doing nothing about it. Any serious Government would immediately implement proactive family-positive fiscal measures and begin urgent work on identifying and rectifying the economic and societal ills that are suppressing birth rates. This Government will not do that. Why worry about the future of Ireland, its children, demographics and culture when there is the next election to worry about or when taxpayers' money can be spent on national-scale virtue signalling? Out there on the ground, there is an appetite for big, serious and real change, not this. For me, that change cannot come fast enough. For now, I will be voting "No" to this Bill.