Ms Bronagh Hinds:

The Deputy’s comments on the Women’s Coalition reminds me that I did not answer Senator Currie’s question to comment on that relating to women and the number of people who ask me: “Could we have the Women’s Coalition back?” That is particularly the women in the women’s sector who do not feel like they are necessarily getting enough representation. They are asking who is running with the policy agendas that are important that they see on the ground.

I have said that moving from 10% to 30% has been great in the assembly. I said on a radio programme the other day that we have great women leaders in Northern Ireland. They are great and I am talking about from all parties. I sometimes get very sick when people say that parties are still going on in the same old, same old way. This has been going on for hundreds of years and someone expects that because there are four or five women leaders of parties that they are going to change the culture, just like that. Come on; give us a break. There is a lot of culture to change and to be open to that.

Something I really admire down here and that we do not have, and will not have, in Northern Ireland, although I support it, is 50:50 representation. We have a young woman who is now running Northern Ireland 50:50 and I know there are 50:50 groups in the South around women’s representation. Am I glad that someone has taken up the mantle? I have been around too long, and I am not going to give up, but it is great that we have great young women leaders coming along as well but because equality and human rights have been an absolute fault line in the conflict, it is very difficult to get to the situation of quotas being acceptable. We have it in the political voting system, in the cross-community voting system, but we do not have it anywhere else. We have argued that it ought to be there for women but it is a difficult issue. It is very good in the South. I would like to hear from women here on how much difference it has made. I do not have the recent figures off the top of my head, but I was monitoring what was happening in the South as well as what was happening in the North. When we started to push the boundaries of women’s participation in all parties, we did better in the North than in the South and particularly in local government. It is not enough in local government but we have done better and we have had women move up to be mayors and deputy mayors, etc. Some of our councils are better than others. I was involved, from DemocraShe, as well as working on training people in the assembly and working with women in the assembly, Westminster, local government and the Local Government Staff Commission for Northern Ireland on a fantastic women and local councils initiative. We had 26 local councils and none of them led by women. There were no chief executives women and women were very much not visible politically in those councils.