I thank the Minister. I really welcome the increase in funding. In particular, the Safe Ireland initiative has been a very successful one. I am particularly grateful for the work of Saoirse and the Inchicore women's support service, which provide fantastic services in the Dublin South Central area. I really welcome the report. We need to know what is and is not working to ensure we are funding correctly into the future.

I thank the Cathaoirleach very much for his intentionality, his specific desire to see the visibility of women increased and the initiative regarding the painting today. The painting is truly lovely and is symbolic of a carer who was airbrushed out of the story. I will spend my remaining time this morning speaking about carers, who tend to be forgotten. In recent conversations we have had with Family Carers Ireland, we have been told that no one ever asks carers how they are. People ask how whomever they care for i…

I thank the Minister for being here today and for taking these statements on International Women's Day. The Minister of State has stolen my line. We had the same first sentence. The theme for this year's International Women's Day is "choose to challenge". This indicates that a challenged world is an alert world and that from challenge comes change. My challenge relates to who is making the decisions and who has a seat at the table. I will begin by quoting the late US Supreme Court judge, Associate Justice Ruth Bade…

Tá brón orm. Níl mórán Gaeilge agam fós.

I will begin with the good news of today's announcement of funding and the significant change it will bring to the south inner city. I congratulate Dublin City Council on the applications it made and the creativity and innovation found within same. However, as much as I had intended to speak about that, I have just received a copy of letter that a parent received this morning about that parent's child, who was born in January 2018 and was exhibiting special needs, that is, autism. According to the letter, there wil…

I have given much consideration to this since Monday as the debate in the House was very good and provided much food for thought. I considered a few aspects. In journalism we are dealing with professionals who have come through college, in the main, and been taught about defamation and legal limitations in the practice of their art and skill. This will form part of that process and it will be a significant event in halting the ability of journalists to name victims of crime, including the ultimate horrific crime of…

Now.

Is the Senator happy to share time?

I call Senator Paddy Burke, who is sharing time with Senator Garret Ahearn.

Senator Ahearn is in possession.

No. The Senator had her time to speak.

The Senator can make a brief clarification.

The Senator has an opportunity to make a clarification and is straying.

We are running out of time for the Minister to speak.

When is it proposed to take Committee Stage?

Is that agreed? Agreed.

In addressing this, I must confess I am loath to contradict legal opinion I generally hold in great esteem. I would not consider myself to be an accomplished law student though I passed with a decent clearance of the grades required. That is where I put myself.

What does one call the doctor who comes last? Doctor. In this context, I see a sense to the order of keeping everything in the proposed new subsections starting with "1" and grouping those together. We are balancing four documents. I have the sections of the Children Act, the amendments and the Bill as published. In the incoherence of so many documents, it can look a little disordered. However, it will be clearer when the new section 252 is published. I agree with the original provision of subsection 1 and then sub…

I understood the Minister's response to be that if we keep the amendments in section 1, the rest of the text will remain numbered as is currently. This would mean that anything outside of the Act, whether it be academic writings, productions within the Department of Justice, the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth or anything else that refers to those subsections will remain accurate, whereas if we renumber, anything that refers to this section of the Act will therefore become redund…

I am not without sympathy on this matter and I agree a degree of nuance in the hands of a judge would be beneficial. A judge would be trustworthy. There may be difficulty, however, in that we are living in a social media age and the hard facts of the last number of years have been that witnesses, including children, have been named, subject to abuse online and hounded in their communities and in schools. In particularly hard cases, that has occurred. If we put a provision in law, we will find ourselves in a positio…