International Women's Day: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-04 ============================================================ Eileen Flynn (IND), Administrative Panel The theme of this year's International Women's Day is "give to gain". I was in Ballyfermot yesterday to attend an International Women's Day event. I saw the poverty and homelessness there. Today, I visited the SAOL Project and spoke to women who were recovering from addiction. They are giving it their all and gaining fuck all. It is as simple as that. These are women who are homeless on our streets. We come in here every year with the same auld copy-and-paste speeches about how much we want to stop poverty for women and be inclusive. It breaks my heart and boils my blood. There has been little or no action. We have been celebrating International Women's Day for 115 years. I never even knew there was such a day until about 2018, when I was first included in celebrating women. There are women looking at us standing up and congratulating ourselves on being the best in the world for helping poor women. God help us. These are the women I saw in addiction today. Women are going through more homelessness and domestic violence. We can have all the strategies in the world and we can stand up and give all of the speeches we want, but action is needed. Last week, the Minister, Deputy Foley, and other politicians in this space voted against women who were never heard in Irish society and who are looking to find their loved ones and the sites where they are buried. The voted against that, so how can we stand here today and say we are all about women's rights. What women? There was a protest outside Leinster House earlier. I would not bother going to it. The protest was about the gender pay gap. How many women who are members of the Traveller community are in employment? The answer is very few. How many of the women I met today have had their children taken away from them by child and family services? Many of these women have been clean for the past two or three years but they have few or no supports. I remember being in a refuge with my mother in 1996. Women like her were told that they could go there for respite. She was the mother of nine children who went through domestic violence. It is the same for women today as it was for women like my mother. I see it with members of the Traveller community and women from other ethnic minority groups. The Minister of State is here today, and this is not her fault. Of course it is not. These inequalities come from what happened under previous Governments as well. I am blue in the face talking about this. I am like the women I met today from the Saol Project. It is all talk and no action. This morning, I was on the verge of trying to vote against the House sitting and talking about gender equality. Why have we not gone out and brought these women in here. There is a certain type of woman that we bring into Leinster House. We bring in the good Travellers, the good black women and good women who are not in addiction and who are educated and have degrees. What about the women in the Dóchas prison? What about the women who are homeless? What about women like my sister who is homeless and who is an alcoholic? What about women like her who were failed by this State when she had her six children? She was failed by women's organisations, just like many other members of the Traveller community. I worked with the National Traveller Women's Forum before I came to the Seanad. I was both a token and a poster woman for all of these women's organisations. It is grand. It got me a platform here today, but I am sick to death of us talking about strategies and inclusion. Those things mean absolutely nothing unless we have action. Women give to gain. These are women who are giving it their all through a health service that is on its knees and that is barely standing. It would not be standing if we did not have the migrant women - doctors, nurses, etc. - working in it. I will not stand here, thank men and say that they are brilliant and are a part of gender equality. Of course they are part of gender equality, but they have also been part of disempowering women over many decades. We talk about men at the top. I have seen a black man at the top in Irish society. I have never seen a Traveller man at the top. I have never seen an ordinary working-class man at the top or seated in this room. We are very hypocritical. While women and children are living in hubs and hotels, we come here being do-gooders, talking about the great work and the fact that we brought in a few women, and so we are absolutely brilliant. Go out and work with these women. Go into the Dóchas Centre, like Senator Lynn Ruane does. Go out and work in these communities. Go out and speak to these women. I spoke to a woman today who had to have part of her stomach removed a month ago because she has cancer. She is one of the strongest women I ever met. This is what we need to do. We need to go out to these women. We need to put policies and legislation in place that protect all women and children. There should be no more talking shops and do-gooding. Let us get the women in here. Nothing about us without us. Let us be inclusive. We talk about there being one Member of the Oireachtas who happens to be a member of the Traveller community and who is pigeon-holed to constantly bring up issues that impact Travellers. Why are there not other women in these Chambers bringing up the issues that impact Travellers? Why is it always the woman who happens to be a member of the Traveller community who is held accountable for 40,000 Travellers? That is up to you all to answer, not me. The answer for me is that I will keep going and keep chipping away at this. I have to do that for the women I met today, for the women I met yesterday and for the women who are living in poverty, who are going through addiction and who are giving it their all and gaining fuck all. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-03-04/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:43+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-03-04