Dr. Fiona Buckley:

On the commute issue, it depends on where a person is located. It can still be a big issue for local candidates. In my county, the Cork County Council building is on the outskirts of the city but somebody might be coming up from, say, Castletownbere. That can still pose an issue.

Women are coming forward to stand for election. We have seen a contagion effect arising from the gender quota at national level. If we look at the number for women's candidacy at local elections, it has risen from the 314 who ran in 2009 to 560 in 2019, which was something like a 78% increase. However, that varies across different political parties. At the 2019 local elections, all parties bar Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael met the minimum 30% threshold. There is still a need for consistent increases across the board and some incentive measure to encourage the political parties to support women's candidacy and put women forward for election. There is a need for the extension of the gender quota at local level.

Many of the issues we are talking about today have only come to light as a result of women's presence in political institutions. One of the main reasons for that is the gender quota legislation that was brought in ten years ago, in 2012. Gender quotas are one part of a suite of packages but they must be there. If they are not, as we saw prior to their introduction, the rate of increase is very slow. It is only with women's presence in political institutions and increasing numbers of women in politics that we are beginning to see a lot of the issues we are discussing today coming to light. Many of the ways, practices and processes of how politics did its business for so long were done under an assumption that politicians were free of caring responsibilities and would not get pregnant. Many of those practices were in place 100 years ago. That is why I am still very strong on the need for quotas.

The Chair is right that the electorate does not have any bias against women. The research on this is quite strong and the work of Dr. Lisa Keenan, Dr. Mary Brennan and Professor Gail McElroy on the recent elections confirms it. It has been a trend for the past ten, 15, 20 or even 30 years. If the electorate does not have a bias against women and is not discriminating against them but women are still not coming forward, then the key focus should be on the parties as gatekeepers. We keep having to come back to that.

Going back to Senator Pauline O'Reilly's point, and touching on what the Taoiseach has said around the need for wider levels of support, the question arises as to whether there is space within local government for extra administrative supports for the work of councillors. In research I did with Women for Election and other research I have done with my colleague, Dr. Aodh Quinlivan, in UCC, working with the women's caucus of Cork City Council, this is something that features in the information coming back to us. If there were more supports on the administration side of the work, that might, as Senator O'Reilly said, assist with the situation whereby most of our councillors are trying to balance their councillor role with employment elsewhere. In the eyes of the State, the role of a councillor is still very much seen as a part-time one, whereas recent research indicates councillors spend an average of approximately 32 hours per week on council work. There may be space to treat it more as a full-time role. I did not hear what the Taoiseach said yesterday but the question of making levels of support available might be something that could be considered.