Kathleen Funchion (Carlow-Kilkenny, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Yes. Even if we look at how we are not 50:50 in here, there are other positions such as Oireachtas Chairs. I think there were three female Oireachtas Chairs and now there are only two. Little things like that. There is an awful lot more that needs to be done. Obviously a person needs to break in here, for the want of a better word, but there are a lot more practical things that could be done around that as well in terms of then being in here.

I made points about childcare and accessibility because we kind of stray into talking about politics but it is about the education and leadership as well and they are really key elements to it. The best way out of poverty is access to education and that comes back to access to quality, affordable, accessible childcare. That is something we hope to look at after the recess. We have had meetings about early years topics and we hope to look back at that because that is a key part of all of this. Extending some of the schemes to childminders as well would be very helpful particularly for people in rural communities who do not necessarily have access to centre-based early years services as such.

My last point is that I totally agree with what Senator Ruane said. There should be something relating to the funding being linked to running women in winnable seats. Not running the women as the third candidate out of three and hoping to get two candidates elected. I think there should be a strong emphasis on this. The other reason for that is it focuses the minds. Let us be honest there are some people who see this as an inconvenience and see this as "we have to get a woman". I have lost track of the amount of times I have heard that. We want to have women involved and we want women's voices and experiences at the table. If the funding is based on winnable seats, it will help to change the narrative. It is terrible to say that we have to do that but it should be looked at. I welcome the fact that the funding for political parties to encourage women and look at different ways of doing that has been introduced. I welcome that there are gender quotas but it needs to be more than just running women and ticking the box. There needs to be a percentage of winnable seats. I had no questions in that; it was just a big rant that I go on.