Dr. Michelle Maher:

I will start with social media. It is correct that this conversation cannot be had without touching on social media. The regional women's caucus consists of 42 councillors across 13 local authorities. There is a cohort within that caucus that would express a lack of confidence in promoting their work within their communities because of a fear of saying something wrong or facing a backlash on social media. However, it is the nature of our electoral system that localism is promoted, so being visible, especially in rural Ireland, is very important.

Within our programmes, we deal with the reality of this. In rural Ireland, with the large distances involved, a canvass might mean getting to three or four houses in an hour given the time spent getting out of the car, opening the gate and going up the lane. That would be replicated a few times. It is different in a more urban areas. Social media, therefore, has to form a key component of an overall campaign strategy for women running in the local elections in rural Ireland. That is why we build digital self care and self defence into our programmes as part of preparing women for local elections. Outside of quotas, what are the other avenues to get more women involved? We can have supporting programmes like ours and others and start on time. It was very important for us to get our guidebook out in 2021. That contains the importance of raising one's profile well in advance of an election. As early as Easter 2022, we recommended that women start to do a soft canvass. It might only be five doors in their local area but we recommended they start that soft canvass. Perhaps they are not declaring themselves as potential candidates but they are finding out what issues are important to their members.

We put a lot of work into preparing for selection conventions. This goes back to point that political parties are key in all for this. The selection convention is really the first election and women should treat it as such. For women who are interested in joining a party or who are in a party, we already have most of them putting their names forward to be local area representatives. This gives a person some level of standing both within the party and within the community. The people voting will get to know them and see that they are not voting for them because they are a woman. Rather, they are voting for them because of what they will be able to do for the community as a county councillor.

In my opening statement, I spoke about the importance of quotas as underpinning programmes that are already in place in rural Ireland for the local elections.