Cecilia Keaveney (Fianna Fail)

I am speaking from personal experience. I look to the experience of the Women's Coalition in the North, which played a major role in the peace process. Every day women try to sort out rows in homes, etc. and have skills that are different. What happened to the Women's Coalition and where is it now? It is gone, although some of its members have important senior positions.

Senator O'Toole touched on the fact that the media want us to be in the Chamber five days a week. During my time teaching in England an election took place and when I asked 67 teachers in the staff room who their MP was, none of them could tell me for certain. The balance we have here, where we have half a life in the Oireachtas and half a life in our constituency where we can listen to our people, is an important aspect of our role. We are not just national legislators, but are legislating for our people. This aspect of the role applies also to politicians from the county councils. County council meetings might start in the morning and continue all day, but people want certainty on time. They want to know when the meeting will start and when it will finish. The starting and finishing time, especially for county councils, should be adhered to. The condensed short week of the Oireachtas suits the likes of me. I am here for a certain number of days and if we were confined to working from 9 to 5, what would I do from five in the evening till nine a.m. the next morning that would be constructive? The long working day suits me, but it might not suit Senator Bacik, because she wants to get home to the wee ones. This illustrates why the issue is so difficult.

The attitude of the outside world has an influence in this area. I am on the Council of Europe and have attended meetings and been able to contribute. I am only there because it threatened to throw us out because we had no female representative. We now have eight members, of whom I am the sole female, but we comply with the minimum requirements of gender equality. The same happened with the Inter-Parliamentary Union, IPU. We were going to get kicked out of that because we were not sending female representation. We need outside agencies to point out what is wrong and to tell us it is unfair not to have female representation. Fulfilling the minimum criteria does not meet national requirements and sends out a message to the electorate that politics is still a male-dominated area.

I will not rehash my personal experience over the past 14 years, because it would be too dangerous to tell people what female representatives face. It is easier to say that the Women's Coalition dealt with men throwing chairs at them. That happened to someone else and I can say it happened. There is a long way to go with regard to the culture here and the acceptance of females. We can say they are treated as equals but, in reality, people do not even realise they are not treating females as equals in the real sense.

Many women are involved in community work. If we could get them to explain why they get involved in such work for such long hours and days but will not step into politics, we might find some answers. We must have women on the ballots. I do not subscribe to the idea that it must be a woman because a woman is better than a man. I do not believe that. However, the females who get involved in politics give their hearts and souls to it. I accept I am preaching to the converted here given that the majority of Members present are female but this is not something that will evolve naturally. I have watched and hoped. My party produced a report on women in politics 12 years ago but the Senator's report has found that the situation is getting worse, not better. The statistics are available but I will not quote them.