Dr. Fiona Buckley:

On social media, I was interested in a recent paper by the data analyst, Ian Richardson, where he analysed across a year, the tweets directed at public representatives in Ireland. While he did not identify any significant difference in the level of abusive tweets that men and women in the Dáil were receiving, there was a stark difference at local level and at Seanad level.

Women in local government were getting eight times more abusive tweets than men. In the Seanad women were getting three times more abusive tweets than men. It is a very real issue. We know from UK and European research that the level of abuse that women of colour and LGBTQI+ women get is intensified even more. What we need to stop doing or what may have been happening in the past was that people were expected to put up with it as there was a sense that this is the cut and thrust of politics. That approach needs to stop. Increasingly, we are seeing more people speak publicly about the abuse they are receiving. That is a difficult thing for a person to do, but it is also very important because it is shining attention on this. Ultimately, as the political scientist Mona Lena Krook asserts, much of this online abuse is deliberately designed to try to silence politicians and given that women are getting more than men, it is very much trying to silence women's voices and perspectives.

As Dr. Maher from See Her Elected mentioned, the self-care approach is very important, but equally the UN, the Council of Europe and the EU have all recommended that legislation on violence against women in politics be introduced. If we wish to eliminate it, the penalty must be criminalisation and prosecution of online violence. They are the mechanisms that need to be looked at to address this.

The other questions and points that were raised about political parties and political party activists asking women to run, that is vitally important. Both Women for Election and See Her Elected elections will show that women need to be asked to run three to five times.

The other interesting issue that came out of the research we carried out for the More Women: Changing the Face of Politics report that we did for Women for Election, was that many women spoke about not getting any feedback after an election. They may have contested an election and did not win. They were then not given any guidance post election, such as a debrief or feedback and they were very much left to their own devices. As Ms Reilly said, people need to be honest that at the outset a woman might not win and it is important to come back and work with that person to encourage, support and maintain her interest.

Strong political leadership is needed in respect of the selection of women to winnable seats and it has to come from the top. The leadership simply has to come straight from the top and if there is dissent in political parties, it will need to be dealt with through strong leadership and support from the top level. That is the key way. In Ireland we do not have a proportional representation, PR, list system. We cannot build placement mandates into the list.

It is a completely different issue, but if we were to perhaps start looking at randomising the list of candidates on the ballot paper - currently we list candidates alphabetically - perhaps there would be a mechanism to introduce a form of placement mandate where every second candidate listed is a woman, but legislation would be required to randomise the ballot paper. I mentioned this 13 years ago at another committee meeting and people in the House with surnames beginning with A, B, and C were not very happy with me when I made that suggestion. It might be something that could be considered.