Ms Katherine Licken:

In terms of the boards under the aegis of the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, has been very proactive on the gender equality front. Some 51% of the members on boards under the aegis of this Department are female and 49% are male. As Ms McBride pointed out, the composition of the board of the Arts Council is 58% female. The composition of the board of the Crawford Art Gallery is 64% female. The board of the Heritage Council is 55% female; the board of the Irish Film Board is 71% female; the board of IMMA is 55% female; the board of the National Gallery of Ireland is 53% female; and the board of the National Library is 50% female. This year, the Minister organised a workshop for all of the cultural institutions under the aegis of her Department with a view to them developing gender policies. It makes a difference when one makes a statement by nominating people to those positions.

I mentioned earlier the governance code, which arose on foot of developments in the charity sector. We ask organisations to comply with the code and if they have not complied, to commence on that journey. The code asks organisations to agree to operate to key principles in order to run their operations more effectively in areas such as leadership, transparency, accountability and behaving with integrity. That is one of the conditions we put on organisations that the Department funds.