Ms Catherine Lane:

The National Women’s Council welcomes the invitation to speak to the committee today. We are the leading representative women’s membership organisation in Ireland. Established in 1973, we represent a membership base of over 190 groups and organisations across a diversity of backgrounds, sectors and locations and we are committed to the promotion of full equality between women and men. Our mission is to lead and to be a catalyst for change in the achievement of equality for all women.

We welcome the Electoral Reform Bill in its intention to deliver a much-needed centralised and professional structure to provide for the needs of all residents, candidates, political parties and the media. Its responsibilities and obligations to uphold democratic values should be clearly outlined, including ensuring that electoral politics delivers for women. Equality, diversity and inclusion should be clearly evident across all its functions and responsibilities, including broadening the scope of the functions currently outlined in the general scheme. These should specifically include the promotion of gender balance in political life and in electoral contests, including necessary change to support women’s access to elected office. It should include using the broad policy role to engage groups facing barriers in participating in the electoral system and safeguarding equity of access for all, including Travellers, young people, disabled people and people from minority ethnic backgrounds. It should also include the creation of conditions for safe and fair elections, electoral competition and electoral communications, both online and offline.

There is an urgency in this area to deliver substantive change for women’s representation and participation in public and political life. Representation of women in politics remains unacceptably low. At local level, only 26% of councillors are women, with significant disparities between rural and urban areas. In rural areas, in the most recent local elections, women made up 23% of candidates as opposed to 35% in urban areas. Only ten local authorities have achieved a critical mass of 30% or more women councillors. The local elections are a critical pipeline for elections at national level, as over 80% of women Deputies have served as local councillors. We welcome the commitment outlined in the programme for Government to "introduce practical measures that will encourage more women to stand in local elections in 2024" and to consider the recommendations of our report on Women Beyond the Dáil: More Women in Local Government, with a view to reporting in 2021. As was the case with the general election, a gender quota for local elections is a necessity if we are serious about achieving gender equality in political life.

The number of women in politics matters. In a representative democracy, it matters who represents us and what they represent. Women’s representation is essential to the quality of our democratic processes. This is because principles of justice and equality dictate that a representative government should constitute a microcosm of the larger society in terms of gender, class, age, minorities, disability and so on. The under-representation of any of these groups weakens our democracy as their interests are at risk of being marginalised or ignored. Women make up the largest group who are currently vastly under-represented in Irish political institutions, government and political parties. We believe that the electoral commission can contribute to addressing and challenging these systemic gender inequalities still evident in Irish political institutions.

The Citizens' Assembly on gender equality recently presented its comprehensive recommendations covering many key areas for women and women’s equality. It outlined a clear pathway to achieve gender equality in Ireland and has called for the Government to act promptly and decisively. The citizens have made a clear statement that women’s low representation in all sectors of society needs to change and they do not want soft measures, they want quotas. Some 87.6% of the citizens voted in favour of extending the gender quota for party candidates at general elections, local elections, elections to the Seanad and European Parliament elections by the end of 2022. We have advocated, and continue to advocate, for the introduction of quotas of candidates for local elections. We will continue to campaign for systematic and cultural change which addresses the hostile environment that women, particularly minority women, experience online, utilises the technological advances that can support access and inclusion in the system and supports elected representatives with caring responsibilities. Specific positive action measures need to be introduced to address the particular barriers experienced by Traveller women, disabled women, young women and women from minority ethnic backgrounds. We are asking the commission to specifically address the following areas as part of its functions. It should take on a role around supporting and promoting political candidacy among women and under-represented groups, including overseeing the extension of candidate selection quotas for local elections. It should monitor the reporting and public investment of political parties to ensure the participation of women. That could include funding related to carrying out gender and equality audits of political parties, covering membership, officer roles, candidate recruitment and selection. It should develop standards for political discourse that are free from discriminatory rhetoric and hate speech, and tackle online abuse. The rise of online abuse has impacted women's lives in many ways. It can have a chilling effect, leading to women turning away from political life because of those difficulties, which risks widening the gap in gender representation.

The Electoral Act should be amended in order to protect the legitimate advocacy role of civil society organisations, as set out in the Electoral (Civil Society Freedom) (Amendment) Bill, which is also before the Oireachtas at the moment. This is an issue on which the Coalition for Civil Society Freedom, of which we are a member, has set out a detailed position. We believe we need to use all the opportunities available to us to support the participation of women in public and political life. Transformation is required to achieve gender equality in Irish politics and to break down the barriers for women in politics. We look forward to engaging further with the work of the committee and assisting its work in any way we can.