Professor Yvonne Galligan:

I would be delighted to be able to comment on that. The Chairman is absolutely right about the Seanad nominees.

The discretion the Taoiseach has in that respect was important for gender balance in the Seanad. We need to think about how we handle gender representation at local election level in particular. I was struck by the comment by my colleague beside me who talked about how women choose jobs because of their flexibility and closeness to home, and that this is the main reason for doing so. The main reason that always has been given for women taking part in local elections is because of the flexibility and closeness to home of that particular representative role and yet in Ireland, we still only have 25% female councillors. We really need to look at local government in a targeted way to see what can be done to improve gender balance at local level now. Some measures include the Maltese measure, which is an interesting one that is mirrored in the Seanad process, as well as the issue around penalties for parties or some sanction or strong incentive to improve. Local government is the pipeline to national government, be it in the Seanad or as a Deputy. I will just make those points.

I will make a very brief point on representation in public life. While we spoke about women's participation on boards, we did not speak about the chairing of those boards. While there is relatively healthy representation of women in boards, more can be done. The issue is there, however. Representation at the level of chair is still a difficult issue. That, again, is a leadership position that needs to be tackled in terms of public representation in general.