Dominic Hannigan (Labour)

I welcome the Minister of State and congratulate her on her appointment. I have not had the opportunity to do so in the House since her appointment, but I am pleased to see her in the ministerial chair today.

I will restrict my comments to the second report published last October by my colleague, Senator Bacik, on women's participation in politics. Before I do so, I wish to make some comments on my experience of female involvement in politics in my area of County Meath. In the last general election in 2007 I was struck by the fact that in one of the two constituencies, Meath West, of the ten candidates who had put themselves forward to the electorate for election, not one was female. That clearly illustrates something is wrong with our system that must be addressed at a fundamental level, through legislation if necessary, and it is a position that is no longer tenable. The position was not much better in the constituency of Meath East. Of the 11 candidates, four were female, which constitutes a higher representation but still not equal. It is an issue we must examine.

In that regard, the report published by Senator Bacik has come up with some good conclusions and recommendations. I will deal with four of them, the first of which concerns child care. One of the findings of the committee was that the long hours involved in politics were not conducive to facilitating the involvement of women. I know this to be true, for example, from the times at which party political meetings are held, something of which I am sure the Minister of State is well aware. Last night, for instance, I attended a meeting at 9.30 which continued until just after 11 p.m. Anybody trying to raise a family while involved in politics must make a simple choice. Which do they put first? Of course, family life must come first, but we must examine the way all of us involved in the various parties organise our business because meetings that finish at 11 p.m. do not allow the involvement of those with families.

Another issue we must examine is that of child care supports. It is clear such supports are inadequate as provided within the system. This Parliament is not family friendly. We must make changes to rectify this and make it easier for people to participate. One measure we could take is providing more teleconferencing facilities. One of the benefits of the eruption in Iceland will be that more people will use videoconferencing and, perhaps, that is the direction we should take. It would help overcome travel difficulties and help people become more involved without having to leave their homes and families.

A second key recommendation of the report concerned pay. The authors found that, on average, women received 22% less pay than their male counterparts. This puts people at a disadvantage when it comes to running for election. Senator Healy Eames made a valid point when speaking about funding. We need to look at that. We could consider providing some funding for women candidates through the national system or through a voluntary system whereby each party would provide more funding to female candidates to help them overcome any pay imbalance that might exist.

We also need to look at the area of confidence and we need to encourage more people into politics through head hunting. I had experience of this in County Meath in the lead-up to the previous local elections. Before the local elections in Meath last year, only three councillors out of 29, just 10%, were female. There was something fundamentally wrong in that. As the director of elections for my party in Meath, I like to think we went out of our way to try to rectify the imbalance. In conjunction with my colleague, Senator Bacik, we head hunted people and found an excellent candidate, Eileen Drew, who agreed to run for us in the Navan electoral area. We also approached people such as Niamh McGowan for the Dunshaughlin area. In all, we ran more female than male candidates in Meath for the elections. We chose well, got good candidates, and out of four Labour Party members on Meath County Council, three of them, 75%, are women. This is fantastic. In terms of the proportional share of seats, we have the biggest representation of women. This has helped to change the overall representation of women in Meath and we now have nine females out of 29 councillors, as opposed to three out of 29 before the previous elections.

This is a step in the right direction but it is only achieved by finding good candidates and putting them forward. This means parties and directors of elections must be proactive, find people and convince them to run. They must convince them also that they will be able to do a good job. People are often put off by the idea of politics because of the bad press it gets. They worry they will not be able to juggle the balls. The parties must provide them with confidence. They must also provide a commitment and ensure people will be on hand to help when issues arise such as, perhaps, not being able to go to meetings because of a lack of child care. They must commit to doing their best to move meetings towards more child-friendly times. This might help convince people to run who might otherwise be lost to the body politic.

The final area on which I would like to focus is on the culture that exists in society. One of the recommendations that arises relates to role models in schools. I am aware there is an education programme being run from the Office of the Ceann Comhairle which encourages both Senators and Deputies to visit schools to speak to pupils. We need to see female Members visiting schools to convince girls that politics is a worthwhile profession and to encourage them to become involved. I have two suggestions for the Government. First, it should introduce, as soon as possible, the gender parity Bill produced by the Labour Party. Second, some time ago a photograph was taken of all living previous and current female Members. Would the Minister of State be able to organise for that photograph to be exhibited on the walls of this House?