Problems facing women need to be viewed as urgent rather than ‘tokenistic’, Dáil told

International Women’s Day is an occasion to be celebrated but also a day of “extreme frustration, protest and activism”, Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns has said.

Ms Cairns said that when International Women’s Day falls again in a year’s time, she would likely be raising the same issues around childcare, inequality and healthcare for women as “little or no action will have been taken”.

“I look forward to a time in this country when issues like domestic violence, women’s healthcare and justice for survivors are not treated as fringe and tokenistic but as urgent and essential,” she said.

The Cork South-West TD was speaking in the Dáil on Wednesday as statements were being heard for International Women’s Day.

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Minister for Equality Roderic O’Gorman said gender equality does not “stop today or at the door of my department. It has to be a priority every day and for all elements of Government and, at a societal level, men and boys must take action to reflect and find ways to counter discrimination and violence against women where they encounter it.

“We must acknowledge that it exists, recognise the scale of the problem and call it out, and we can never be bystanders to even the most casual forms of misogyny.”

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said she was proud to be the first woman leader of the Opposition and worked alongside “talented, ambitious and hard-working” women. She said despite the scourge of domestic violence, nine counties still have no women’s refuge and those with refuges are often forced to turn women and children away “when they desperately need help, because there simply isn’t room”.

Fine Gael TD Alan Farrell said he wanted to highlight the “incredibly difficult and misogynistic world that the women of the Oireachtas live and work in”.

He said: “Their exposure to special treatment at the hands of nameless, faceless keyboard warriors is a disgusting sight to behold. Regrettably, however, some of those nameless faces warriors manifest themselves in constituency offices and in public meetings around the country, and as a man I would like to take the opportunity to call out this behaviour and demand that it stops.”

Independent TD Michael Collins said he was disappointed that an “astonishing” sports person such as Katie Taylor could not secure a location for her latest fight in Ireland. He said he hoped a stadium could be found, and that if it was a “heavyweight man, they would have found a way”. The Cork South-West representative said the fight could be held in Páirc Uí Chaoimh in Cork and that the situation “needs to be rectified on the behalf of the women of this country”.