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

In the course of the debate on this Bill, the issue of gender balance was raised both in this House and in the Seanad. Under the current law, the proportion of male and female local authority representatives on a VEC must mirror the proportion of the total number of male and female members of those county, city and town councils when added together. This existing system has given rise to practical difficulties, particularly when a number of bodies came together to elect people to a single board. Having regard to these discussions and in particular to an amendment tabled on this issue by Senator Bacik, two new subsections were inserted into section 30. The effect of these insertions is to compel the Minister of the day to make regulations governing the election of local authority members to ETBs. In particular, these regulations may provide for gender balance by creating separate panels for women and men.

They will also empower the Minister, as far as possible, to set down a minimum number of women and men who must be elected by each local authority. The amendment provides that in the making of the regulations the Minister must have regard to the objective of at least 40% of each gender being elected by the local authorities. This reflects Government policy on gender balance on State boards generally.

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