Mark Dearey (Green Party)

The Minister of State, Deputy White, is welcome back to the House.

I found the story Senator McDonald's told on the previous occasion riveting. It was about her progress through her own party and how her view had changed because she did not want women to go through what she had gone through to achieve what she had achieved.

There is much in this debate on which individual parties should reflect. In my constituency group three of the four seats my party holds throughout the county of Louth are held by women. There are many other women within the group and if I do not see them coming through in years to come, I will be asking serious questions about the nature of our group, how it operates and the reason they are not emerging. We must also use this opportunity to reflect on our own structures.

I wish to expand on an issue on which Senator Corrigan touched, namely, the way in which the theme of politics changes when women's participation increases. The Senator spoke about how the social agenda had been moved forward by the greater participation of women, but I believe the economic agenda would also change if there was greater participation by women in politics. I say this because so much of what is economically valuable is not acknowledged or measured within our political discourse. I owe a debt to the report put together by the policy officer who has identified four areas within the economy in which women work; of the four, two are unmeasured - work in the home and work in the sex trade. These issues will remain unaddressed in many respects until the analysis and desire within the political system become sufficiently strong and incisive and the issues involved become sufficiently important to the political establishment. I see many failings in that regard.

Another interesting issue I came across in the context of the debate on the Female Genital Mutilation Bill was the way the asylum system appeared to favour male applicants for asylum over female applicants. It is not gender balanced. It does not recognise women's experience in their home countries as valid when it comes to the issue of potential persecution on their return home; therefore, their ability to achieve success in the processing of asylum applications is reduced. That is another area in which outcomes could change with the greater participation of women in politics.

The point I am trying to make is that political priorities change with the greater participation of women. How we can get to that point has been discussed at length. I wanted to outline some of the potential positive consequences if we could get to the point where we had greater numbers of women making legislative decisions on behalf of women and men in this country. Politics remains a macho world. Another area in which I would like to see change is that of the funding, corporate funding in particular, of politics. It also discriminates against women's participation in politics because it is a boys' club. It is virtually Masonic in certain instances in that the funding of politics is controlled and regulated, so to speak, by a small group of men. My perception - perhaps I am wrong - is that women do not want to be part of this world and generally are not part of it. Another consequence of the greater participation of women in politics would be a reconfiguring of the way politics is funded to allow women to participate in an equal way. I would welcome such an outcome.