Ms Maura McMahon:

I will respond to a few of the questions pertinent to the Green Party. Senator Black asked a question specifically about support for councillors and concerns about getting women elected. We are deeply appreciative of the funding that was made available by the Department of housing to support maternity and paternity leave and provide secretarial support. We would encourage pooling and more equitable supports at local level so everybody can continue to have access. A suggestion of our councillor Eva Dowling was on proxy voting for women, in particular.

I recognise the incredible work done by Women for Election, which has representatives here, but also See Her Elected, the National Women's Council and the Immigrant Council of Ireland. They are doing incredible work in terms of support. Therefore, we see the changes coming on stream, as the CEO of Women for Election has mentioned, but it is really the lack of societal change that is a major blocker, along with the issue of unconscious bias. This could be tackled with a cross-party or cross-sectoral initiative to help voters shift the dial so more women will be elected. Gender quotas are part of that but there is significant work to be done still with the electorate on understanding and being confident about selecting an increasing number of women to run for local and national government.

The second point I want to make is on the comments made on member functions, transparency and accountability. The Green Party believes the decision-making process on the likes of capital budgets should include elected councillors. There were many comments on cohesion and collaboration. Addressing transparency would include big decisions currently made at executive function level.

On supports, which my colleague has just mentioned, the Green Party, as one of the smaller parties, does not have resources at the same level as other parties. We do, indeed, source significant legal advice and private security for many of our members. I believe our party is the only one that has a constitutional requirement for gender balance. We have spent large amounts of money trying to support our local councillors, in particular, around verbal abuse and social media abuse. Somebody mentioned the defacing of signs and having to purchase more signs. Disinformation campaigns are highly organised online, even targeting people at their private residences and interfering with their families. Unfortunately, one of our local women councillors was assaulted at one point during the campaign. Those providing the funding that needs to be made available have to take into consideration the fact that smaller parties do not have the same resources as larger ones.

We need a coherent security plan that is cross-county and cross-council which everybody can access. I acknowledge the work of Women for Elections in trying to draw that together in one of its most recent documents, on which it worked with An Garda Síochána.

We recognise the extraordinary leadership Europe provides with regional assemblies. I echo some of the comments made earlier in that we need a better system. It cannot be perfunctory. We have representatives at the Committee of the Regions. We have a councillor, and now mayor, of Cork, Dan Boyle, but we do not have the necessary governance mechanisms in place as a country. We operate like an outlier because of our systems. We encourage an examination of that.