Mr. John Carroll:

I will speak briefly to two elements. With regard to increasing female participation in local government, this is something we are quite committed to as a party. We are quite proud of the fact, and we have a record in this regard over a number of electoral cycles at a European, Dáil and local government level.

There is a lot of talk about a quota system for local government and local democracy. I am not sure that will be particularly effective because I am not sure what it would be linked to or what the incentives would be to do so. It also creates a perverse incentive to run candidates for the sake of running candidates rather than running people to win seats. Any system centred on encouraging more female participation should be about rewarding parties for getting people elected rather than putting names on a ballot paper.

Anyone who has done a post-election review knows that it is a lot easier to talk to people who had a good experience and won, or came close to winning, a seat, rather than talking to somebody who has run in a scenario where they were encouraged to do so for some broader purpose. No matter how a person enters the process - they might have their eyes wide open in that regard - everyone, once the posters are up, is in it to win it. We need to ensure people who are going forward for election have a good experience and, if they are not elected, will want to go again in the future. I urge a bit of caution around some of the pieces on quotas.

There are five general secretaries and representatives of political parties here. There is a force in Irish politics of independents. They are not contributing to increasing gender participation in Irish politics or producing a large swathe of women to run for election and get elected to local government across the country. Until thought and consideration is given to that element of the matter, the quota system needs further thought and investigation.

With regard to abuse, we are quite proud of the number of migrant candidates we ran and the success they had in this electoral cycle, but over the past four years there has been an increased social acceptance of a level of abuse. The defacing of posters in this election cycle was disgraceful. We face a choice during the course of an election to highlight this, draw attention to the fact and potentially define a candidate by this abuse or whatever else or not seek to bring it into the public domain. That is a choice that has to be worked out by each individual candidate.

I am not sure of the reasons for it, but we all have a role to play in our parties and brother political structure. It is easy to blame this behaviour on Twitter or X, which has definitely played a role, but it is also important to look at the broader discourse in Irish public life. We have to wonder why it became acceptable in this election cycle for people to deface large numbers of posters of migrant candidates when that did not happen five or ten years ago. There is something broader at play that needs thought and consideration. It is about more than just regulating social media.