Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. A few questions came to mind when I was listening to them. What I would love to tease out more, homing in on WCI, is the point about "ensuring political parties run women candidates in a meaningful, serious and supportive way". This is the biggest bugbear of mine. Women are the additional candidate and never the main candidate in many constituencies. For parties to meet quotas, they just add women. That is what I see as tokenism. They do that rather than, may I say in a bold way, removing men from candidate selection. These are men who have held seats for a long time or who are seen as most likely to get seats because they are well known or whatever. What does something that is not tokenism look like in terms of actually taking quotas and making them meaningful?

My other question also relates to WCI's point on sustainable budgets for education programmes, including payment of social care allowances. Could Ms Holt explain a little more what that would mean?

In the past I have spoken about how we should pay people a universal basic income to go to college or education, especially young mothers and other more vulnerable groups with regard to social class. We should make it meaningful and get rid of the idea, which is probably somewhat elitist, that education for education's sake is great. That is a luxury. What would meaningful engagement with education look like with proper financial supports that would replace the need for working while a person is on the journey through education?

My next point is on NGOs looking inwards at how diverse their own boards and structures are at the most successful levels. Do the National Women's Council, Women for Election and other organisations or NGOs that focus on the advancement of a more vulnerable group fail in their own endeavours to replicate this within their own structures? How do we address this so that if we have organisations fighting and advocating for the rights of the working class, their most senior jobs and roles are accessible to these women? We have not yet done this. How can we fight for this if we are protecting our own roles in our own advancement? Equality will only be reached if people advocate for themselves and are running the organisations themselves at that level. What are the thoughts of the witnesses on this?