Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Bill reflects as far as possible the desire for gender balance on the new boards. One man and one woman will represent parents on each board. We are increasing the number of community representatives from four to five and providing that there must be a minimum of two women and two men. The Minister of the day will have the power to make regulations to establish women-only and men-only panels from which people will be elected. That is the position under the current regulations. The current position with regard to local authority members is that the proportion of male and female local authority representatives on VECs must mirror the proportion of the total number of members of the relevant county, city and town councils who are male and who are female. It was mentioned on Committee Stage that this provision had given rise to practical difficulties. This is inevitable, in my view, when a number of bodies come together to elect people to a single board. Instances of this nature in the past have led to unnecessary conflicts at local level and have created doubts about the legitimacy of boards that do not reflect the correct gender proportions.

As Deputies are aware, the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Hogan, brought the Electoral (Amendment) (Political Funding) Act 2012 through the Oireachtas last year. The effect of this legislation will be to reduce the level of public funding given to parties that do not reach minimum levels of gender representation among the candidates they put forward at general elections. This will inevitably have an impact on representation at local level. This issue must be addressed at electoral level, rather than by imposing threshold levels for State boards where there can be no guarantee that the requirement laid down can be met. Having regard to the mandate of members who are democratically elected in local elections, it would be wrong to seek, over and above that, to impose gender balance criteria on education and training boards. The local authority members who will be appointed to each board will form a majority of its membership. On that basis, I do not propose to accept these amendments.

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