Speech by Susan McKay, NWCI Director, at the Trade Union March Against Cuts in the Community and Vol

Published: Tuesday, September 29, 2009

A very proud and particular welcome from the National Women's Council of Welcome to all of the women here today - Mothers, sisters, wives, partners daughters - Mna na hEirinn out to rock the world again.

There never would have been a community sector if it wasn't for women.

The National Women's Council of Ireland is campaigning against the cuts under the banner, No Going Back.

Women did not make this mess - plenty of people are making that claim but there is no doubt about it in our case.

We are half the population but there are far more women employed in there in the Dail as cleaners than as politicians. It isn't women who run the banks either, and when did you last meet a woman who said she was a property developer?

Women didn't get the power or the wealth during the boom years, but there would never have been prosperity in this country without our work. We worked for pay, low mostly, and we continued to do most of the unpaid work in our homes - and in our communities as well.

We didn't make the mess, but you can be sure we will be expected to clean it up.

That's one of our constitutionally designated roles.

Here is what the Leitrim Women's Centre said when we asked our members for their response to the McCarthy Report. "We are disgusted by the way this government is hitting services which have been created by our hard work, vision, commitment and voluntary time to enable our community to grow and prosper."

Here is what the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre said, "We cannot take any further cuts and continue to meet the demand for our services."

Women are here today because we know that when things get bad it is women who get hit first. We get hit financially. We get hit emotionally, and we get hit physically.

So the men who run Ireland have squandered the money...and what is their first thought?

We can take the Child Benefit off the women. We can cut the pay of the women who counsel the women men have raped. We can shut down the refuges women and children run to when the men they love have beaten them up. We can take the money that was meant to train women for leadership and use it to pay for garda overtime.

Did you know the government recently ordained that certain projects set up for women were not to use any of their tiny budget for childcare, transport or tea?

For the National Women's Council, this protest is about jobs, but it isn't just about jobs. It is about services, but it isn't just about services. It is about the public sector, the private sector and the no sector at all in which so many women work and live.

This is about equality and the fact that women in Ireland still don't have it and won't have it if these cuts are allowed.

We don't have power - the people making decisions about our future are wall to wall men. We've very little money. But we do have imagination and vision and anger. There are half a million women in the National Women's Council of Ireland - and our message to all the other women out there who care about women's rights is, join us, now.

We need to save our child benefit, our community centres, our women's refuges, our lives. We need to stand together as women and tell the men who are running - and ruinning - this country that women are going to have a say in our future. We need them to know that for women there is no going back.