Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is hard to know where to begin but I would like to make a comment. It is regrettable that Senator McDowell turned around and told me to "Calm down" for making a comment on a section of the Constitution. I watched his engagement back and forth with other male Senators. I watched him interrupt the Minister. It was extremely gendered to turn around and say that, whether he wants to admit it or not. I have never once seen it. The fact that nobody intervened, and the Chair continued to allow him to turn around to say, "Calm down", was demeaning and disrespectful. I put on the record that it is wrong for him to turn around to say that to me. He could tell me not to interrupt him as he would with anybody else, but he did not. He chose very specific wording. I was not shouting. I was saying that the provision he was referencing in the Constitution does not reference mothers. That is all I said and he told me to calm down. He should reflect on that, because it was quite misogynistic.

I turn to our amendment and removal of the reference to a woman's duties in the home. This is setting out that women and men have different roles to play in their children's lives that are somehow completely distinct from one another and that there is some sort of functionality to a mother being at home that a father cannot provide whether that is when the children are sick or need help or maybe there is a parent-teacher meeting they need to attend. When I went to college and when I started out working in the drugs sector, it was not me the school rang; it was my daughter's father or my dad. My dad was at the school gates every day. He was the one who got the phone calls when my daughter was sick, and he was the one she looked for. Why? Because he was providing the care in the mornings and in the afternoons. She had that bond with him. That bond was special and they cared for each other. She cared for him later on as he got older.That is the wider situation we are trying to capture here, that is, that the duties we have to one another are not only the duties of a mother to a child. I would like the Minister to be really clear that when we talk about capturing care - I will turn to the term "provision of care" in a few minutes - it does not remove the role of a mother and a child in terms of the care they have between each other but expands it to dads and maybe granddads, nannies - whoever it may be. As regards the idea that somehow that is not pro-woman and that somehow what is there is pro-woman, what is pro-woman to me, as a single mother who is not recognised within the Constitution, is for the men in my children's lives to be recognised for the care they give in order that they can support me and are valued in the same way in which I am in their relationship to one another, to their children and to their siblings.

As regards the idea that we throw all mothers out with this, we are, in fact, trying to bring in more mothers. As regards the amendments we spoke to in the previous session, where we redefine what a family is, the Government does not want to redefine what a family is in the Constitution and then wants to say that this throws women or mothers out of the Constitution, but it has already decided that "the Family", with a capital F, remains the same. It is family that is based on marriage. Then that spills over into this article, which means that the women who are supposedly supported to stay at home are those on whom the previous section is based, which is the capital F Family, that is, the nuclear family. Single mothers are therefore not captured in this whatsoever in terms of the current Constitution. In the current Constitution, we see only a narrow definition of what type of mother is supported. We want to move to changing that definition of family and allowing that impact, the new definition here, as to who is considered in this.

Care incorporates many things. It incorporates, hopefully, not only siblings but also child-to-parent care. It ties in with disability as well in some sense because there are children who before they have even become adults are providing in many cases lots of caring roles for their parents, even though their parents are the ones who, legally, are responsible for them. Where there is a deaf parent, there will be a child having to communicate on behalf of the parent sometimes. There are so many different situations in which children end up providing not full-time care but various caring roles. With these amendments, I want to remove that from the Constitution. I want one-parent families to be recognised in the same way in terms of the care they provide such that this new care amendment would include them, but I do not want it to exclude those who need additional care. My concern is that something I want to be inclusive of a wider situation does not go far enough to be inclusive in terms of the rights of the person who requires care. As regards the provision of care in this situation, provision then allows the person providing the care to be the rights holder. A person who may need care, especially additional care, such as a young person with a disability or likewise, does not gain that same provision here. Provision is not about the giving and taking of care; it is only about the providing of care.

If, however, you have a disability and are the one who requires that care, even if it is narrow in being within the household or the wider family, you do not have any rights under this wording because it is provision. What if that is changed and "provision of" is removed and it is just left as "care"? The one I prefer involves community. Senator Clonan hit on this. It is maybe the apprehension around putting in the Constitution something that results in a rights-based approach for persons with a disability, creating an obligation on the State to be able to provide particular care. Right now, this provision looks after only the person who is providing care, not the person receiving it, which means we are not looking at the care someone requires in a sense. Our amendment seeks to insert "community" into that to take it wider than the family, while taking into account the potential concerns that to include the wider community may result in commercial or private actors saying, "There is an obligation for us in that because we are part of the wider community or are placed within the community." As regards the wording I would prefer to be put in, when the word "community" is added, the rest of it should be left in terms of the bonds between us.

As regards the bonds between us, if it is any sort of private obligation or involves commercial people, such as asserting any sorts of rights in this Constitution, this wording creates a much more personal aspect to the bonds between us, which means someone does not have a bond with the respite care centre or the nursing home. When the wider community is included, it potentially allows for the involvement of neighbours, local community services, State-led services, family resource centres, community development centres or the person who has no family. All the neighbours chip in and help the person. In ageing communities such as mine, that happens a lot. There have often been families where there have been no children or where the children have moved on. Maybe one partner has died and the other lives in the house alone. When this is kept within the home or within the family, that does not take into account the fact that some people do not have that. If the community is not included, its role either in giving care to someone else or receiving care is not captured in that. If the community piece is added but the bonds piece is kept, it is kept on that much smaller, localised scale rather than this commercial idea of a commercial entity saying it fits into this or is covered by this in terms of the provision of care.

I mentioned kinship care in the previous session, and it is something to maybe look at. This involves State care, so familial arrangements are made. In most cases, the State is aware of them, but there are lots of things that do not flow from that in terms of the supports to which a person who is in a kinship care arrangement has access such as extra educational stuff. Kinship Care Ireland said that it is estimated that between 10,000 and 12,000 children are living in informal kinship care in Ireland and that the guardian's payment is the only social welfare payment for which kinship carers can apply. I refer to their having to apply adequate care to situations in which kids may have been in situations involving turmoil. Maybe there is grief, loss or trauma, or maybe there are extra layers of need that require support. We may not recognise the care they provide in keeping children within that familial situation and the importance of that care. We may not match that then with an obligation in terms of policy and legislation as to how we value their care situations. Many kinship carers are grandparents taking on the full-time care of grandchildren on small fixed pensions. Many are aunts or uncles who have reduced or stepped away from their work to provide full-time care. Other kinship carers are adult siblings deferring their education and their life plans because their life trajectories have changed overnight as a result of the needs of, say, their younger siblings. Some kinship carers are family friends or neighbours who, despite not being related, step forward to ensure that the child they know and love does not have to enter formal foster or State care. I wonder where they fit in within the proposals as to how we define care with the suggested wording in the referendum.We know that rights do not naturally flow from the change. I want to vote to remove the article regarding a woman's place but I then have to think about that in conjunction with not being too happy about the care piece, how the provision of care is defined, the lack of community reference and as Senator Clonan said, the fact that it is still very focused on the paternalistic style of care. We have to be able to discuss the Government plan to be able to meet the needs of those people who will be captured within that and what that looks like. A really easy measure for me is a Government commitment to ratifying the UNCPRD optional protocol. If the person receiving care or the person with a disability who maybe will need care at various stages of his or her life does not have a legal basis within this because it is about the provision of care, where else are this person's legal rights exercised? If his or her legal rights were exercised in terms of the optional protocol, we could see that there is a clear commitment to people with disabilities being able to exercise their rights under that treaty.

I will not go into the individual amendments. I think I said that the one I preferred was the one that adds in community but keeps the bonds between us or else the one that removes "the provision of" so then it includes carers' care in the widest possible sense. Senator McDowell referenced the fact that care is in the new Title of the Bill but then the actual amendment says "provision of care" so the provision of care and care in the Title do not seem to be lined up. The Minister would definitely get far more people on board because as I said, I want to go out and advocate that all mothers and all families are captured under this referendum and that their duties and functions as mothers are recognised beyond the home but I also want to make sure that those who need or provide care have wider access to State supports in making sure this care is provided. The stuff about "shall strive" can be argued out. I am more worried about the provision of care piece because I feel the provision of care is a one-way thing rather than a between thing. We could go a long way in fixing that.