Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I join Deputy Brendan Howlin in recognising the success the experiments of the Constitutional Convention and the Citizens' Assembly have been. When we served in government together, the convention was included in the programme for Government agreed to in 2011. None of us really knew how it would work out, but we can now stand over the fact that the assemblies were representative of the public. Moreover, they gave issues real and detailed consideration and thus allowed us to move on in many ways. They have been very helpful to the political system in helping us to understand what the opinion of the public would be once fully informed of all the issues. The Constitutional Convention helped to give rise to the referendum on marriage equality three years ago. The Citizens' Assembly gave rise not only to the referendum on the eighth amendment but also to the general scheme of the Bill that we published before the referendum.

The Constitutional Convention looked at other things, including ageing and the issue of climate change. One of the issues we have discussed in government is potentially asking a new citizens' assembly to look at the wider issues of gender equality. We know, for example, that much good work has been done on issues such as domestic violence, as evident from the domestic violence legislation going through the Houses. There is work to be done on other issues, for example, the gender pay gap, greater equality in pensions and having far higher participation of women on company boards. For the first time, some 52% of the people appointed to state boards last year were women, but when we look across the corporate sector, we see it is not replicated. Fewer than 20% of the members of boards of listed corporations are women. One of the things we are considering is the next question we will put to the Citizens' Assembly. The question will look at the wider picture of equality between men and women and ask the assembly to come up with a set of proposals to allow us to follow through in many ways on the result of the referendum and deliver equality between men and women in other areas.

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