Brian Stanley: Women, Institutional Abuse and Childcare
Brian Stanley addresses the Dail on the role of women in Ireland's social progress, the legacy of institutional abuse, and gaps in supports such as domestic abuse refuges and childcare. He calls for full transparency about past abuses and urgent action on services for victims and families.
Key points: women's leadership and historical injustices
Brian Stanley praises the central role women have played in advancing independence, voting rights, social change, trade union rights, and recent campaigns on divorce, contraception and gender equality. He underlines that, despite progress, fundamental work remains to protect women's rights and welfare.
Institutional abuse and media oversight
Stanley condemns the inhuman treatment of girls and young women in industrial schools and the Magdalene laundries, and highlights that abuse also occurred in Protestant-run institutions such as the Bethany Homes. He accuses sections of the media, particularly the Irish Times, of ignoring or suppressing the plight of victims from Protestant-run homes and calls for everything to be brought into the daylight.
Domestic abuse, online abuse and services gap
The TD draws attention to ongoing shortfalls in supports for victims: Leash Domestic Violence Services in Port Laoise still lacks a domestic abuse refuge, and recent allegations of online abuse and assault at UCD demonstrate the urgent need for better protection and prevention. Stanley stresses the need to address online abuse alongside traditional domestic violence responses.
Childcare and economic pressures on working-class women
Stanley notes the financial hardship facing working-class women and the necessity of addressing childcare as part of the broader programme of social reform. He says progress is important but incomplete, and urges ministers and policymakers to act decisively to close these service and protection gaps.
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I welcome the opportunity to speak on this here today. I think in doing so, I want to recognise the role that women have played in bringing about revolutionary change in this country. Indeed, they have been to the forefront of it on many occasions, to fight for independence, to fight for the right for voting, for franchise, social changes, workers' rights, trade union rights, economic changes, and in every area, politics, and in recent decades, the campaigns for divorce, contraception and gender equality. I want to acknowledge as well, and we need to acknowledge, the cruel manner in which girls and young women were treated in Ireland, particularly in the industrial schools, in decades gone by, and in the Magdalene laundries. It's nothing short of inhuman what happened, and we must never allow ourselves to go back anywhere into a situation like that again. Most of them were run by the Catholic religious orders, and that's where, and obviously there's an issue there for the Catholic Church, and I'm saying that as a Catholic. But often, what's often conveniently ignored by sections of the media, and particularly by the Irish Times, is that some of them are actually Protestant run. The Bethany Homes, for example, Protestant run. The children in those suffered a cruel fate and cruel abuse, which has been ignored and deliberately ignored and suppressed by the media, and all attempts to try and highlight it by those campaigners who tried to campaign for the victims of the Protestant run schools have been ignored and censored over the years, and you'd have to question why. So we need to, everything needs to be out into the daylight. We need to deal with all the matters of the past and move on from it. So while great progress has been made on many issues, there's still a lot of fundamental change that's required. In the area of domestic abuse, which is mainly again women, Leash still does not have a domestic abuse refuge. Leash Domestic Violence Services in Port Leash provide an excellent service for people, but there's a need there for that to be addressed. Online abuse, we had the case two weeks ago of the awful abuse of a young woman in UCD, allegedly raped, drugged, photographed, and that circulated, and vile abuse about her circulated throughout the school. The area of childcare needs to be addressed. Working class women in particular face financial hardship and access to help. So there's still work to be done, Minister, and while we can clap ourselves on the back, there's a lot more to be done before we can really do it. Thanks very much.
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