Kathleen Lynch T.D. Minister of State for Equality Speech at National Women’s Council AGM June 2011

Published: Sunday, June 26, 2011

INTRODUCTION TO MINISTER LYNCH BY CLARE TREACEY, CHAIRPERSON OF THE NWCI.

These are hard times for women in Ireland, and they don't look set to get any better any time soon. In such times, it is important to have champions, and we are very happy to have such a champion as our guest speaker here today at this 2011 Annual General Meeting of the National Women's Council of Ireland.

We were thrilled when we heard that Kathleen Lynch had been appointed Minister of State for Disability, Equality & Mental Health this March - she is perhaps the first person to hold that role who is proudly and explicitly a champion of women's equality. This is, quite simply, because she believes in justice.

A good many years ago, she was one of the women who campaigned with brilliant success to get unemployed women their social welfare rights, and last year at a landmark conference in Cork she gave the best definition possible of why we should have gender balance on our ballot papers. Choice, she said, is democratic.

She also proposed that an excellent aid in relation to the overload associated with being a mother with a demanding job outside of the home was to have a very large cupboard in the house into which dirty clothes, undone ironing and maybe even unwashed children, could be tossed, in case of emergency.

She is, in short, the sort of woman who gives feminism a good name.

Click here to read the Minister's speech in full.