Joanna Tuffy (Dublin Mid West, Labour)

I am sharing time with Deputies Anne Ferris and Ciara Conway.

I wish to put on record my opposition to the gender quota proposals in this legislation. My first reason for opposing the provisions is that they are very likely to be unconstitutional. They appear to be against many provisions in the Constitution. Second, I believe they are undemocratic and, third, I believe they are discriminatory. Those are my grounds for objecting to the proposals.

The move towards introducing legislated quotas in Ireland is based on information that is basically misleading. People have been misinformed about examples such as the situation in Sweden, as mentioned by the Minister of State, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, and Deputy McLellan. Most countries in the EU have not legislated for quotas, nor do they have constitutional quotas. In the majority of countries in Europe some political parties have voluntary quotas but even in those countries it is not necessarily the norm or the majority of parties that have voluntary quotas. Our proposed legislation has not been implemented in most countries and in countries where it has, it has been unsuccessful.

I wish to deal with the claims about Sweden. I have read a great deal about this. It is often cited as an example of where quotas have worked but, in fact, quotas have never been legislated for in Sweden. I wish to refer to a paper by Lenita Freidenvall, an academic in Sweden who is based in the University of Stockholm and is a member of the Women in Politics Research Centre. She also carries out research on behalf of the quota project. She obviously favours quotas but this is what she said about the Scandinavian countries and Sweden:

In international literature on women in politics one finds the argument that women's political representation reached a historical and worldwide high in the Scandinavian countries - Denmark, Norway and Sweden - due to quotas.... This is, however, not quite accurate. For instance, there have never been any constitutional quota requirements in the Scandinavian countries. Moreover, while almost all parties in Norway have quota provisions, no parties in Denmark use them. Furthermore, only some political parties in Sweden have introduced quotas for public election.....

To summarise, she says the Center Party, which has enjoyed the best record in terms of the representation of women in Sweden, has never operated quotas and does not even have targets for women in politics.

She points out that the real breakthrough for Scandinavian women occurred in the 1970s before the introduction of any quotas. It has been a slow process along an incremental track. In addition, she points out that only three out of seven parties in Sweden have ever operated gender quotas. That is important information that has not been made available up to now.

Another misleading point being made is that the parties are somehow an obstacle to women becoming involved in politics and running for election. In fact, however, that is not borne out by the statistics which anyone can consult, as I have done. For example, in the 2011 general election the percentage of independent women candidates was 8.9%, or 18 of 201. The percentage of women candidates who ran for registered political parties was 18.3%, or double the independent women's figure. One finds that many parties ran quite a high percentage of women candidates. For example, Labour ran 26.4%, Sinn Féin almost 20% and People Before Profit 44.4%. The party in the Dáil with the highest percentage of women Members is the Socialist Party with exactly 50%. That party, however, ran one of the lowest percentages of women candidates at 11.1%, or one in nine candidates.

Parties are positively encouraging women to run for election, so there are obviously other reasons women are not putting themselves forward for election. I have never been presented with evidence to show that women are any less likely to be selected at a selection convention than a man if they put their names forward. Men win and lose at selection conventions, as do women. Generally, women who put their names forward for selection conventions in political parties are very successful. That is the factual situation.

Twelve years after introducing the kind of legislation we are proposing here, France has only 19% of women members in the national parliament. That is also the figure for women's participation in parliaments internationally, and is not much greater than what applies in this House.

As I have said many times, quotas are not democratic. They do not leave it to voters at selection conventions to make up their own minds on who to choose. Quotas try to engineer the outcome and are imposed from the top rather that from the grassroots. It will be in the hands of the leadership to implement quotas, so they will be imposed.

In addition, quotas do not suit our electoral system which involves multi-seat constituencies with individual names on ballot papers. We do not have a list system whereby one could put 50 men and 50 women candidates on such a list. Very often, a party might pick one or two candidates in an Irish constituency. If a party leader decides to impose a candidate on a constituency, and the decision is to have one female and one male candidate, in practice it means that a woman who got more votes than the highest placed man in terms of the contest, would not be selected because the man had to take the place on the ballot paper, even though she would have more votes. If she was the second placed woman in that contest, but the highest placed man was below her, she would not be selected either, even though she had more votes than the man. That kind of discrimination often backfires and defeats the purpose.

Swedish courts have recently ruled against quotas in universities because they have discriminated against women. Women have had better results than men but are losing places in university courses due to the quotas that were in place.

Many people would agree that if we want more women involved in politics, including running for election, we need women to become active in politics at grassroots level and have a real say. Quotas, however, do the opposite to that by undermining participation by men and women in political parties. They undermine democracy in political parties and give too much control and power to party leaders.

As I have mentioned, quotas are discriminatory, blunt instruments. Many people have said so, even those in favour of quotas. They are an even blunter instrument in our electoral system where one cannot just decide on a quota; one must pick and choose constituencies where they are implemented. One may be pretty sure that party leaders will not impose quotas against the men or women they want to see on the ticket. Therefore, quotas are a blunt instrument that can be abused.

This legislation enshrines discrimination in our laws. There is currently no discrimination in our laws concerning a person's gender when they want to run for election. Article 16.1.3o of the Constitution states:

No law shall be enacted placing any citizen under disability or incapacity for membership of Dáil Éireann on the ground of sex or disqualifying any citizen or other person from voting at an election for members of Dáil Éireann on that ground.

However, we are making the issue of gender a factor in whether someone actually gets to run for election for a political party. The quota system also makes an issue of one's gender, as opposed to people running as human beings. People are being distinguished by their gender rather than working in solidarity as men and women.

I wish to raise briefly the unconstitutional aspect of quotas. Some years ago, the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Constitution examined the PR-STV system. That committee was advised that measures which went further than merely encouraging parties to take positive measures with regard to female candidates would raise serious constitutional questions. The committee felt that any measure that coerced political parties to select certain types of candidate or which imposed quotas in that regard would be unconstitutional. It also mentioned the case of Kelly v the Minister for the Environment where a judgment was made on the basis that one cannot treat candidates unequally in elections. In the legislation before us, however, State funding would be used to discriminate between candidates on the basis of their gender, which I believe is in conflict with the Kelly case. Other people have also raised concerns about this. It obviously affects freedom of association and makes an imposition on political parties using the State mechanism of funding in terms of what they should do in elections. I believe this will be found to be unconstitutional.

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