Ms Rachel Coyle:

Perhaps some of the points relate more to what the other witnesses are speaking about. I completely agree with Senator Ruane that we cannot be what we cannot see. The National Women's Council meaningfully tries to reach out to disadvantaged groups and get them to engage with us. The truth is they do not owe us anything. We want to be representative. We have groups across the spectrum. We see the underfunding of the community and voluntary sector and the women's sector more generally. This is a pathway for building capacity. The funding cut during austerity has never been restored. Then we have the additional energy cost rises and inflation. I do not have to go into that here. What does it really say to people from these communities when the State will not even fund the centres or organisations that are there to represent them? I ask the committee to definitely take this on board. It depends on what we mean when we say "education". There are all types of education. There is formal and informal education. There are different types of intelligence. We try to reflect this in the diversity of our staff and our board. We are always working towards it. Next year we will develop a new strategic plan. Core to this will be ensuring we maintain this diversity.

I completely agree with the points Senator Ruane made on making quotas meaningful. Interestingly, the Department set aside funding for political parties to pick up and develop measures in their party structures to find and identify women candidates. They deliberately made it flexible enough to see what works for the various political parties. We are working with the Department to monitor this a little to see whether it leads to anything in the upcoming local elections in particular.