Ms Eva Dowling:

I will pick up the hybrid meetings topic. I fully support us enabling councillors to attend in person. The thrust of the debate is brilliant when you can attend in person. It is not just for people with small children, but also people with disabilities and younger people as well. It is not just about hybrid meetings. We should be looking at how accessible our buildings are and always assessing that to ensure they are physically accessible for everybody. It goes to my point about childcare. I have brought my babies into the chamber, but it is really common in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown for councillors - men and women across the chamber - to bring a child for maybe an hour before the other parent comes and picks them up.

This is the busy family life we are all living. There is no reason we could not have some sort of provision for childcare, so maybe we should focus on that rather than on removing hybrid.

To give an example, during our first round of county development meetings, which was in 2020, we facilitated them by being socially distanced. This was before we brought in hybrid. Around this time, the gender balance we had just achieved on our council was dwindling and we lost that balance by about three or four councillors in the space of a few months. Women were silently resigning from the council, and while I do not want to speculate as to what those reasons were, the gender balance was going. It was Councillor Mary Hanafin who raised this and we surveyed our past and present women councillors in Dún Laoghaire about it. It was during this time that I was expecting my second child, and I was looking around the chamber, seeing women resigning, watching my belly expand and wondering how I was going to do this. I was not sure if I was going to be able to stay in the job, but it was from the introduction of hybrid that I was able to stay, and I was really proud to participate completely in all our meetings.

Hybrid is important and is not just for women. It is for people with disabilities and younger people as well. Another aspect Senators are looking to examine in these proceedings relates to how to get younger people interested and involved, and younger people are lacking in council chambers throughout the country. The lord mayor referred to climate action. I invite Senators to look at what we are doing in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. The chamber and the hybrid system are working and there have been tweaks along the way. It was not perfect to begin with but it functions really well.

On paternity leave, as politicians we need to lead by example, and if we want to have full equality in our country, we need to roll out paternity leave, which every other workplace has. Plenty of men on our council have also had children during the most recent term. I was really proud to put forward a motion during this council term calling for full maternity and paternity leave, and every councillor in our chamber immediately supported it. It had overwhelming support, but it was a great pity that only maternity leave was acknowledged and provided for. It is important both for women and for gender equality.