Ms Niamh Gallagher:

I thank the Senators for the invitation to speak here, particularly Senators Mac Conghail, Quinn and Healy Eames for organising this event. It is important for us to see our work recognised in this way and to see it finally on the political agenda.

I am here to give a flavour of some of the work that Sean has talked about. Women for Election won the Social Entrepreneurs Ireland impact award in 2011, one of its higher level awards, worth €200,000 over two years in a mixture of cash and business support. I hope I manage to communicate in my speech the value of that award. It was unbelievable and overwhelming for us to be able to step from an idea about something that we knew could and would work to actually going out and doing it. That is what Social Entrepreneurs Ireland did for us.

I know that the women in the room are familiar with Women for Election. Our organisation inspires and equips women to succeed in politics. We do that through tailored training, mentoring and support programmes for women who want to take the step from interest in politics to action. We do this because we have a vision of an Ireland with a balanced participation of women and men in political life. Michelle O'Donnell Keating, my business partner, and I really believe what Paul O'Hara said about social entrepreneurs solving big social problems. One of the biggest problems facing the country, and it has faced it for several decades, is the desperate lack of balance in our political system. That results in a lack of women's voices in this House and more seriously in the Dáil which is a failure to employ our country's talent in making decisions that matter and impact on all of us. In the Dáil 15% of elected representatives are women which means that 85% of those making decisions are men. Representation in the Seanad is better, at 30% but we are still not there. At local city and county council level the figure is 16%. We have a long way to go. Women for Election believes that by providing tailored supports we can push the figure up and bring balance into the decisions that matter.

The solution to this problem is a combination of things. We will not solve it on our own. The evidence shows that a mix of hard and soft measures will make the difference in getting more women into those roles. The hard measures are quotas. I attended a super debate in this House about the legislation on this issue that was passed in the summer. Senator Ivana Bacik and others championed it from beginning to end. It is fantastic news but any of us active in this space know that we need more than the quota to make sure that we have a long, strong and really effective change in our politics.

The soft measures are training, mentoring and support for the women who are going to stand up and put themselves on the ticket and for the women behind them.

We are discussing supporting women from interest to action. This does not mean that everyone needs to be an elected representative. It is as Mr. Coughlan stated, in that I could not imagine a more chaotic environment than one in which everyone was a social entrepreneur. Similarly, it would not be a pretty sight if every woman we met decided to run for election. Under the interest to action idea, we are supporting women to go through the political pipeline, to get active as canvassers, to become party political activists, to start considering how they could be campaign managers and to examine how their business, community and trade union skills might translate into political life so that it can be richer.

Since winning the Social Entrepreneurs Ireland award in 2011, Women for Election has run an INSPIRE one-day programme eight times around the country. It focuses on campaigns, confidence and communications, the three areas with which women told us they wanted support if they were to make the next step. Some 350 women from political and non-political backgrounds have gone through the programme. We have seen an interest from women who are leaders in community groups or run their own businesses. It is an interesting mix of people.

This year we will launch our three day campaign school, EQUIP, the first campaign school at this level in Ireland. It is based on a couple of models that run in the US. It will work intensively with women who will contest the 2014 local and European elections to support them in being the best candidates they can be.

All of this contributes to the movement of women we are building around Ireland to be part of that change, but what difference will it make? Women for Election is slightly more abstract than some of the organisations traditionally associated with social entrepreneurship. We do not fit, silo-like, into education, health or environmental impact.

We have spent a great deal of time examining the evidence of what difference is made by having more women elected in those countries that have managed to reach the tipping point. There are four changes: policy, power, priority and process. In a practical sense, women tend to be more open and transparent in how they conduct politics, for example, by putting the minutes of their meetings on their websites, discussing who they meet and inviting groups not traditionally associated with politics into the political space. They have a different attitude to power, which is evident across business and communities as well, and they can focus on different priorities at times.

In terms of policy, we have traditionally stated that women are more focused on issues associated with women's equality and rights. Last night, however, Women for Election had the privilege of meeting an Australian woman who used to be a Minister in Queensland for a number of years. She discussed her experience in that Parliament, which had 36% female representation at the time, and the difference that participation made. Before being elected, all of the discussions she had heard were concerned with women's impact on issues of women's rights. When she joined the Parliament, though, she saw that women had the greatest impact on gun control. She stated that it was not a question of the four P's, process, policy, priority and power, but of perspective. Women bring an entirely different perspective to debates on every issue. This is the area in which we are working. The difference is intangible, but important. This is what Women for Election is about and is what Social Entrepreneurs Ireland recognised.

We found it difficult to make our case in the initial days of approaching Social Entrepreneurs Ireland and trying to get funding. We do not fit into a traditional charity bracket. Ms Michelle O'Donnell Keating and I believe that we are entrepreneurs and that the change we are trying to make will have a significant impact, but it cannot be measured or fit into the grant-making structures. Grants are awarded to migrant organisations or educational bodies, but Social Entrepreneurs Ireland understood the intangible difference that measures such as ours could make to Ireland. For this reason, it backed us and we won the award. I like to believe that we are delivering for Social Entrepreneurs Ireland by trying to make that change, but we will see whether that is the case in the 2014 elections and the general election that follows them.

I will build on Mr. Coughlan's point about money. Money is important, but it is not the only part of the solution. One of the most important aspects of the Social Entrepreneurs Ireland award is the combination of cash and business support. When we were starting our movement and organisation, all that we could see was our need for money so that we could give up our day jobs and focus on getting everything off the ground. Instead, the difference has been made by Social Entrepreneurs Ireland, which pulled us back to focus on the milestones that it set with us, concrete business goals of operations, financial, governance and succession planning, and pushed us in terms of the strategic side and meeting our goals. If we do not meet them, our organisation will flop once the money runs out and we will have made no difference.