Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Bill provides that parents and community representatives will have an equal number of men and women on the education and training boards. In regard to staff, the Minister of the day is conferred with a regulation-making power to establish women-only and men-only panels from which people will be elected. That is the position under the current regulations. In the case of local authority members, current gender balance requirements applicable to members appointed to VECs can and have given rise to practical difficulties. Those difficulties arise particularly where a gender balance requirement is applied in a situation where several bodies are coming together to form the local authority membership of an education and training board.

I would personally favour the introduction of gender quotas in some form for local elections. It is probably the only way in which this issue can be fairly addressed. In the absence of such strictures, however, and having regard to the mandate of members who are democratically elected in local elections, I am reluctant to attempt to impose gender balance criteria in regard to education and training boards to which local authority members are appointed and form a majority of the ETB membership. Nevertheless, I am open to giving this matter further consideration and the Deputy is welcome to return to it on Report Stage. As a former member of a local authority, he will acknowledge that where there is an imbalance in the gender composition of an authority, a requirement that its appointments to the VEC and subsequently the ETB must be so balanced could prove unworkable. That is our concern. It is not that we are opposed ideologically to the notion of gender balance. On the contrary, where we do have the capacity to direct that such balance be achieved in the appointments to a particular panel or body, we have done so. The difficulty in this instance is that we do not have that type of control in respect of local authorities.