Emer Currie (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am not sure if Senator Mullen was trying to say this matter is irrelevant and therefore not worth the time or is so important that we need more time.We need more time but I think this is a very important referendum and I will be voting "Yes, Yes" to it.

I am conscious that I am coming to this debate today reflecting my own experiences and views, which brought me into politics. This is personal. It will be for the diversity of women we meet on the doorsteps and see coming through the doors of Leinster House. I am not a constitutional lawyer and I do not work in law but I have worked in the corporate world and have worked as a stay-at-home mum. I find both hugely rewarding and hugely challenging in equal measure. I hold two beliefs. One is that regardless of whether you work in a boardroom growing your revenue or in your sitting room raising your children, your choice should be valued and supported. The second belief I hold is that as a Government and State, we should de-gender those choices around care and formal economic activity. I do not believe that caring duties should be seen as something women predominantly do. The assumption in the past was that gender equality was dependent on economic independence and a revolution in the workplace but I also believe that we need a revolution in our homes when it comes to sharing care. I do not necessarily mean that it is divided 50:50 on a daily basis. I mean that more men take up the role of care in the home than we see at the moment. At the moment, we are all very familiar with the second shift where most women who work go home to take on the majority of caring duties as well. As a Government, we have progressed corrective policies in order to address gender equality but we also need positive policies in order to bring about that revolution in the home. I am voting "Yes" to this referendum to remove gendered language and see Ireland become one of the first countries in the world to enshrine the value of care in its Constitution.

I am even happier to hear the Minister say that there is an onus on the State for the progressive realisation of support for care and that it is not symbolic as it was in 1937. What does that look like? This conversation is really important as part of this debate. It is about accessible and affordable childcare so that women and men have a choice about whether they will work in the home or return to work. It means building on paid paternity leave and bringing it closer to maternity leave and looking to countries like Iceland, which have a required timeframe for sharing parental leave. It is about the Minister looking at his work-life balance Bill and not just introducing flexible work for parents and carers because my concern is that the people who will take that will still be women. In order to democratise flexible work, you must normalise it. We should be looking to countries like Finland where there are core working hours that give flexible work to everybody and allow parents to juggle caring duties and work. You will see the number of women in work is higher there and that the number of hours fathers spend with their children is higher. It is about a basic income for carers and moving away from the means-tested carer's allowance. It is about support for people to allow them to live independently. It is about a carer's guarantee. It is about supporting our disability groups and family carers.

I agree with removing gender stereotypes. We are recognising all families in society and recognising that it is the family and the people in that family that constitute the primary unit in society and not the institution of marriage.