Ms Niamh Gallagher:

I find it difficult to engage in the discussion about it. If one is really honest and looked at candidates that are run throughout the country for different geographical reasons and so forth, there are a number of token candidates. If we are going to talk about tokenism, let us look at the various reasons that tokenism exists, not just where there are female candidates. In my experience and in view of the women we have met through the programme so far, it will be very difficult to make that point at the next election. There are many women getting geared up for that election, so let us wait and see.

Senator Mullins raised the point about making a living and Senator Brennan asked if there was any fun involved. It is brilliant to get up in the morning and work on a thing one cares passionately about and on which one really wants to work. It is a huge privilege for anybody to get the opportunity to do that. However, Senator Mullins asked about making a living. That is a really important point. We make a living because Social Entrepreneurs Ireland supports us, along with the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, the Ireland Funds and the Equality Authority. Our programmes generate a significant proportion of our income, but not all of it. There does come a point when it stops being fun, when one is so worried about how one will make a living that one cannot bring that passion to one's work. That links back to what Deirdre was talking about earlier with regard to growth capital and building organisations that are sustainable. One does not want people such as Caroline and James, and all the other awardees, beaten down and no longer enjoying it because of those challenges.

Finally, on the point the Leas-Chathaoirleach made about trying to find the women, we hear a great deal that women are not inclined to find politics as attractive as men do. It appears to be the last bastion, in a way, of this level of imbalance. He referred to law, engineering and other areas, but politics has not caught up at the same pace as those. The report of Senator Ivana Bacik and the Oireachtas committee on women's participation in politics looks at the barriers and classifies them as the five Cs - cash, culture, child care, candidate selection and confidence. Confidence is the one that emerges a great deal with the women we have been meeting around the country. It appears that more persuasion is required to encourage women to recognise the ambition within themselves and be strong enough to declare that they can and will do it. Our experience is that with our support they become more inclined to be able to make that leap. Not only do they recognise that there is an organisation to support them, but they are in a room with 50 other women who have also started to name this ambition. One begins to see some peer support. We talked about role modelling in respect of social entrepreneurs but there have been few female role models in this space, so it was difficult for them to relate to other women.

The other aspect is a lack of good news stories. We hear a great deal about the long hours of Dáil sittings, but there are 25 women in the Dáil. Over 1,000 local, county and city council seats throughout the country are filled by women and many of those women would say it is quite a positive experience to be able to marry their family and home life with their role as a local councillor in their community. We should not just see women in politics as women in the Dáil but tell some more of those other stories.