Annie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will remain seated, if that is all right. I will not go over all of the things that were said yesterday. On behalf of the Labour Party grouping, I am proposing an amendment to Part 2 on page 6 to delete the lines 12 to 14, inclusive, and substitute the following:

The State recognises that care within and outside the home and Family gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved. The State shall, therefore, take reasonable measures to support care within and outside the home and Family.

The amendment is self-explanatory. As was said yesterday and has been said a number of times today, the current wording in the Constitution is based on gender stereotypes that have no place in a contemporary constitutional text. I do not believe we should confine women and mothers to lives of duty within the home and not refer at all, for example, to fathers having a role or responsibility in the home and all sorts of other things. This amendment intends to broaden the Government proposal and to recognise care outside the home and not just within it.

We are supportive of the Government's proposal for a referendum but we would like to see it broadened, particularly because when we reflect on the citizens' assembly and the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Gender Quality, chaired by my colleague, Deputy Bacik, there was a strong view that the sexist language relating to women and mothers should be deleted but it should be replaced with recognition of the role of care. The care role within the home and in the wider community should be recognised and valued. The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Gender Quality had extensive engagement with carers, women's groups and groups representing disabled people. Out of that consultation came cross-party support for wording that was regarded as effective in expressing the wishes of the citizens' assembly and which it was felt would give a meaningful recognition of care in the Constitution on, as I said yesterday, a gender neutral basis. We feel the Government wording falls a little short of what the citizens' assembly and the Oireachtas joint committee recommended. We feel the wording is somewhat more restrictive. The Government's definition would confine constitutionally recognised care to the care given by members of a family to one another by reason of the bonds that exist between them. We would like a more meaningful definition.I said yesterday that over 200,000 carers were recorded in the 2022 census. The figure was 299,128. I kept saying it was over 200,000 but the figure was actually 72 short of 300,000. That is an enormous number.

Much of this has already been said so I do not need to go around in circles but yesterday, as I was speaking, it occurred to me that it was as if we were discussing the concept of care as part of a family structure. As many of us know, care is much broader than that. I know there is a difference between care provided by a family member and care provided because the carer is paid. We know the difference but we would like all types of care to be recognised in the Constitution. While I appreciate that may come with all sorts of complications, including with regard to workers' rights, we would still like to see it, which is why we provided for it in our amendment. The amendment seeks to reflect the position taken by the citizens’ assembly and the gender equality committee that care should be recognised both within the home and outside the home.