Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Senators have told me that they know this, but the fact is that the Government is getting rid of a reference to duties within the home which extend to more than care, although care is a very important aspect. It is replacing it with, as I have said, a rather watery tribute to care being given by family members in a home by reason of the bonds between them. There is the removal of even a nod of constitutional respect to all of those aspects of male and female parenting that cannot be characterised by the term "care". We then have a slap in the face to so many other kinds of carers because the only care to be given even a watery constitutional recognition is that element of care that takes place within the family relationships.

To be clear, there ought to be a reference in the Constitution that does not privilege the duties of mothers in the home. Duties are not something to be stigmatised or disrespected. Every parent recognises that they have duties within the home. The question is whether they are to get any help or particular respect from the State for the value of what they do in the home.

Senator Higgins may be perfectly right in saying that there were many failures to give support to women doing their duty of caring within the home in, for example, non-marital families. I do not think anybody would dispute that. The fault for that cannot be laid at the door of the Constitution or this particular clause. The problem with this clause in the Constitution is not the harm it did; rather, it is the fact that it did not go far enough to include the duty of fathers in the home and was never given sufficient impact in practice in the way in which it was implemented. It was treated as though it was one of the directive principles of social policy, I think it is fair to say, as opposed to an active, vibrant, causative and effective clause in the Constitution. When we attack the clause for being allegedly sexist or out-of-date, we are actually attacking the wrong target. We ought to attack the fact that the clause did not include enough and was not implemented enough.

Regarding the amendment I am supporting, it does not refer to men. In other circumstances, and if Report Stage was taken separately from Committee Stage, I might very well put down an amendment that referenced men, as well as fathers and-or mothers, within the home. As everybody knows, because of this crazy legislative timetable we had to put in our amendments last Friday before we even had a Second Stage debate and the Minister had a chance to consider the wisdom of what we might be saying.

Senator Keogan's amendment is a welcome attempt to undo the damage that will be done by the Government's proposal, should it be accepted. I find that the proposal is not targeted. It does not simply seek to insert gender-neutral language in the way I am saying would be desirable, with references to the duties of fathers and mothers and parenting duties, going beyond care duties per se, as important as they are, whether by fathers, mothers, other families members or outside the home. Instead, as I said in another context, the Government is seeking to remove all language that is offensive to our new elite. In effect, apart from the two references mentioned by Senator Ruane, gone will be the word "woman" from the Constitution, a word which the National Women's Council of Ireland and the Minister's governmental colleagues refused to define.

Gone will be the word "mother" from the Constitution, motherhood being seen by some in the Green and wider movement as setting sister against sister. Gone will be the idea of a privileged home-maker, be it man or woman, because the basis for economic support for family duties will be removed. Gone, even, will be the idea of home, a community within which there are mutual responsibilities arising from natural relationships, especially, but not exclusively, those of adults towards children. Gone will be a reason why the State could have any particular support for marriage. Gone, too, will be the grounds on which one might expect the State to support work in the home, the duty to support home-makers to be replaced by simply striving to support carers. We can contrast the term "striving" with the State's unimplemented endeavouring to ensure wording which did not get any practical teeth. Good luck with getting anywhere with the term "striving".

The amendment, which I wholeheartedly support, seeks to undo most of the damage the Government proposes to do while placing an additional onus on the State to support carers within a caring role in the family. It grieves me that Family Carers Ireland would support a vague promise by the State to strive to support family carers at the expense of undermining the only support and acknowledgement 300,000 stay-at-home parents have in the Constitution. Reducing the role of work in the home to caring will do nothing to provide more support for families. Of course, we have no understanding of how parents who work full time in the home might be affected as we have had no pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill.

I am with Deputy Catherine Connelly on this one from the perspective of possible supports I would prefer if we stick with what we have. Surely it would have made much more sense for Family Carers Ireland to hold out for a proper, separate constitutional statement in support of all carers, separate from, and in addition to, a recognition of the duties of fathers and mothers in the home and the State's undertaking to support them in those duties for all of the reasons I have discussed regarding why fathers and mothers matter to their children and their children's lives.

So much for an inclusive Constitution. The work of mothers within their families is to be set at nought. All mothers in the home are, in effect, being thrown out of the Constitution. More than 250,000 people are performing unpaid caring duties in Ireland. This provides the hidden underpinning of our health service. We have found ways to develop schemes to reward artists and their contribution to society, but we cannot find wording to constitutionally recognise the importance of non home-based care or to reward it. Senator Keogan's amendment at least proposes that care in the home be recognised and supported without undermining mothers, although we would all have preferred a proper stand-alone provision of care which goes much further than the one being proposed by the Government. As to the valuable work of carers, their work is often different from that of mothers and fathers in that the father-child or mother-child relationship is different from the carer-cared-for relationship. As we know, much of the caring needs in reality, and on a day-to-day basis, are carried out by mothers and women who give so much of their time to the home. The Minister has chosen to ignore carers outside the home, making a virtue of providing for caring within the home, but only in a very watery way, while at the same time taking away valuable legal recognition from homemakers.

At another committee, we have heard of people with disabilities or suffering impairments seeking more support so they can live their lives more fully. This so-called “care” amendment is a lost opportunity. I cannot understand how carers or their organisations can swallow this sleight of hand, allowing their needs to be manipulated in this way. A stand-alone carers constitutional clause was the way forward, as I have said.

In conclusion, this is the politics of bait and switch, as I have said previously. The Minister has held out to people the apparently inclusive approach to de-linking or decoupling marriage from family and, again, he has held out the apparently enlightened approach to departing from a mothers-only reference to duties within the home. That is the bait. The switch is this: the Minister did not give people what would have been generous and inclusive in response; in other words, a clause that recognised both men and women in the home and their duties - both fathers and mothers. He did not give carers a clause that would recognise all care being done, whether within or out of the home. He has taken advantage of the apparent attractiveness of the initial complaint about the existing constitutional arrangement but he has departed very dramatically from what was discussed or proposed, even by the citizens’ assembly, and he has put something on the table that does not actually extend to include fathers and mothers, does not extend to other carers and simply promotes the narrow ideological agenda of a particular wing within the Government. That is very much to be regretted.