Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I am not addressing this issue to the Minister of State, Deputy Tom Kitt, with whom I get on well, but I am always amazed at the way in which the Government can understand the positions of the powerful but as one moves down the chain of power in society can go into a position of absolute rigidity. I recall the Government's decision to exempt itself from any of the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act while insisting that everybody else at lower levels in the food chain was subject to the full rigours. The amendments introduced were entirely about the inconvenience to Government of aspects of it but everybody else had to accept the full rigours. Some years ago the staff of the Cork Institute of Technology were allowed to elect two members to the board of management. At that time the staff was approximately 95% male and 5% female — the gender balance has since improved — and the Department of Education and Science instructed that of the two members to be nominated to the board of management one had to be a man and one had to be a woman. There was no understanding of the complexity of the difficulties. It would be a shock to IBEC and ICTU if they were told to sort out the matter among themselves and ensure they had an arrangement whereby at least 40% of the board was female. This matter will continue until somebody says there is one major teacher union where the membership is probably 75% female and the national executive is approximately 75% male. It may be that women have more sense than to become involved in this area and sometimes one suspects that is the reason, but at the same time it is disappointing. While I do not believe in quotas, there are areas of society, particularly in the ranks of the employers' group, where women are excluded. A significant part of the real business of organisations such as IBEC is done outside of the official boardrooms and, perhaps, in golf clubs where women are not permitted to be members. Let us talk through the implications of this. It means they have places they can meet where they will not have to meet women and where there are people with whom they want to deal as equals. I will not make a huge song and dance about this because the point is well made and I do not want to embarrass a decent man further.

It is entirely wrong in respect of a body which is meant to focus on the future and provide an image of how we want to use our prosperity that we cannot say that 40% of the membership of the various bodies mentioned here should be female. That is the issue. We know there is no prospect of its being 75% female although perhaps it should be. Many of the issues that are most pertinent in Irish society are issues that are pertinent to women, particularly child care and work-life balance which are two of the biggest social issues facing the country.