International Women's Day can and does mean different things to people. For my part, I have always seen value where celebration is productive and furthers the cause, rights or conditions of women or children or our understanding of these. It is also appropriate to reflect on, commemorate and educate people about the women who have gone before us whose contribution to society and our communities has gone unmarked and uncelebrated or whose contributions may have been entirely unknown about or misattributed through ignorance or design. What I cannot abide, however, is pithy backslapping for the sake of it. While significant progress has been made in Ireland in the last century, there is little celebration in the bar being raised from the floor. We have only to look around the Chamber, outside it perhaps, to debate this, to get fair representation of the progress being made in striving for a truly equal society. I welcome the Government's commitment to zero tolerance of domestic and gender-based violence. However, the strategy was adopted in 2022 and is due to run until the end of this year. I am not sure I see the progress to zero tolerance. I remain unconvinced the Government will reach its commitment to double the number of refuge spaces available to those fleeing domestic and gender-based violence. I have yet to hear the Government acknowledge that the target is an ambition that would see us with only half the number of spaces mandated under the Istanbul Convention. In my constituency of Cavan-Monaghan, the Government has sent incredibly mixed messages about whether or when it intends to live up to its commitment to deliver a refuge in both counties or expects it to only happen in one county with the other still being one of the nine counties without a domestic violence refuge. All the while, we hear many policy announcements on various legislative matters, but a year into the Government, I have yet to see one related legislative measure fully pass through these Houses. Where in the name of God is the delivery of the promised plan to deliver childcare capped at €200 per month within the first 100 days of Government. For International Women's Day this year, my message to the Government is that we appreciate the rhetoric, but it is long past time it progressed beyond the rhetoric and media opportunities to meaningful policy delivery.

Sentiment score: 0.25