Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We have achieved a lot when it comes to balance on boards and we have done so through voluntary action. That includes State boards, which are reasonably gender balanced, and we have seen a lot of progress on those Irish Stock Exchange, ISEQ, big company boards. Having gone from 18% to 34% in only a few years I imagine we could get to 50% in a few more years but we need accelerators and mandatory quotas are part of that. There is an EU directive coming down the line and there is legislation from Deputy Higgins, which we support as a Government and Department. The devil will be in the detail and we have to make sure we get that right but the principle that there should be no less than 40% of any one gender is a good one. To pick up on Deputy Hourigan's comments earlier I have not yet worked out how we would fit non-binary or other gender identities into that. When it is binary it is straightforward but where do we put things if we recognise other gender identities? I would be interested to hear the views of members and to get advice on that.

I would have no objection to quotas in local elections. The way they are done for the Oireachtas is linked to a party's funding. If the quotas were to be applied at local level as well we would have to amend the way we fund parties to take account of how well they did in local elections; not just how well they did in the general election. That is doable but it would require a bit of work to do it. It might help in a way because it would smooth out the peaks and troughs that political parties experience. Parties could have a good local election and a bad general election or the opposite and it might help to smooth that out so it might be a good idea in the round, even setting aside the gender issues.