Results 2,821-2,840 of 11,403 for speaker:Ivana Bacik

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality: Recommendations of the Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality: Discussion (Resumed) (13 Oct 2022)

Ivana Bacik: Thank you so much Ms Farrell and Dr. Maher for a very succinct and clear overview. I commend you and Women for Election on all the great work in mentoring and supporting women to come forward as candidates. All of you have identified that as a crucial point. The figures on the low levels of participation of women you have give are very stark indeed, in particular outside Dublin where we...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality: Recommendations of the Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality: Discussion (Resumed) (13 Oct 2022)

Ivana Bacik: Thank you for being so concise and for giving us such a wide array of different measures in this and your previous submission. I am going to open the floor to questions. I have many myself but I will go to Senator O'Reilly first. Senator O'Reilly is the Vice Chair of this committee.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality: Recommendations of the Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality: Discussion (Resumed) (13 Oct 2022)

Ivana Bacik: Senator O'Reilly has raised a number of issues and I invite Ms Gleeson to respond first.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality: Recommendations of the Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality: Discussion (Resumed) (13 Oct 2022)

Ivana Bacik: I thank Ms Gleeson very much. I will now call on Ms Farrell or Dr. Maher from See Her Elected.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality: Recommendations of the Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality: Discussion (Resumed) (13 Oct 2022)

Ivana Bacik: I thank Ms Farrell very much. I now call on Dr. Buckley.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality: Recommendations of the Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality: Discussion (Resumed) (13 Oct 2022)

Ivana Bacik: That is very interesting. Does anyone else wish to come in on that particular point before we move on?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality: Recommendations of the Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality: Discussion (Resumed) (13 Oct 2022)

Ivana Bacik: That is a very important point. Would Dr. Maher or Ms Farrell from See Her Elected like to comment on the issue of Dáil constituency sizes?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality: Recommendations of the Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality: Discussion (Resumed) (13 Oct 2022)

Ivana Bacik: That is very clear. Does Senator O'Reilly wish to follow up?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality: Recommendations of the Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality: Discussion (Resumed) (13 Oct 2022)

Ivana Bacik: That is okay; nobody else is indicating to speak. A couple of colleagues want to contribute later and I also have some questions, but Senator O'Reilly may continue.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality: Recommendations of the Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality: Discussion (Resumed) (13 Oct 2022)

Ivana Bacik: I thank the Senator. I thank everyone again for the clear outlines and proposals they have put forward. I have a long-standing interest in this area. I also read the 2009 report that we produced in the then Joint Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women’s Rights, and to which Dr. Buckley referred, in which Ireland is described as an "unfinished democracy". At that point,...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality: Recommendations of the Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality: Discussion (Resumed) (13 Oct 2022)

Ivana Bacik: We can look back at the transcript but I think his point was that there are many more barriers that quotas alone cannot address. I think we all agree with that. Some of the barriers we ended up discussing at length were low pay and, as the witnesses outlined, the difficulty of juggling a full-time job in the case of many councillors, the supposedly part-time role of a councillor and family...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality: Recommendations of the Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality: Discussion (Resumed) (13 Oct 2022)

Ivana Bacik: That is great. It is good to hear about the good practices that are going on.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality: Recommendations of the Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality: Discussion (Resumed) (13 Oct 2022)

Ivana Bacik: I thank the witnesses for those full responses. We covered a lot of ground there. I call Senator Warfield.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality: Recommendations of the Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality: Discussion (Resumed) (13 Oct 2022)

Ivana Bacik: We are very keen to investigate this point given that the citizens' assembly recommendation No. 20 was so clear on this issue so I thank Senator Warfield for raising that.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality: Recommendations of the Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality: Discussion (Resumed) (13 Oct 2022)

Ivana Bacik: It is great to get this clarity.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality: Recommendations of the Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality: Discussion (Resumed) (13 Oct 2022)

Ivana Bacik: Dr. Buckley has addressed the point about the Seanad and may want to comment on this.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality: Recommendations of the Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality: Discussion (Resumed) (13 Oct 2022)

Ivana Bacik: I also thank Dr. Buckley. We looked at Belgium in the 2009 report as she said. We modelled our proposal from legislation on its Smet-Tobback law. The reason we examined Belgium was because in 1990 Belgium and Ireland were ranked equally in the world but the difference was that we had stagnated whereas Belgium adopted a quota and moved rapidly up the rankings. It is very useful to hear the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality: Recommendations of the Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality: Discussion (Resumed) (13 Oct 2022)

Ivana Bacik: That is a more optimistic note. The parties' views being different from the views of individual councillors might be an issue. Tying funding of political parties to performance in local elections could be done through legislative change. We looked at it back in 2012 when bringing in the original gender quota and we will examine this again because the citizens' assembly has been very clear....

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality: Recommendations of the Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality: Discussion (Resumed) (13 Oct 2022)

Ivana Bacik: It is important to say that the citizens' assembly has highlighted that in recommendation 24 and some of the witnesses touched on it earlier. I thank Senator O'Reilly for a very clear list of points.