Ivana Bacik (Independent)

I am delighted to be here to speak on Second Stage of the Electoral (Amendment)(Political Funding) Bill 2011. I am particularly pleased and grateful to the Minister that the Bill is being introduced in the Seanad. It is most appropriate that it is introduced here.

The Bill will make important reforms to political donations, increase transparency in our system of political donations and place important and significant new restrictions on corporate donations. We all very much welcome those changes.

I want to focus on Part 5, relating to State funding of political parties and gender balance, about which I have already communicated many times with the Minister and I am very grateful for his generous and full responses to my submissions to him. I am also grateful to the Labour Party spokesperson on the environment in the Seanad, Senator Denis Landy, who has generously given way to me and Senators Susan O'Keeffe and Aideen Hayden, who particularly wanted to speak about Part 5 of the Bill and to focus on the historic change it will bring about in Irish politics.

Before discussing Part 5 of the Bill I welcome, as others have done, the large group of men and women who have worked for many years to see the change brought about by the Bill happen and who are here to support it. They are in the Gallery and in the audio-visual and overflow room, because we could not accommodate them in the Chamber. They include academics such as Professor Yvonne Galligan, Claire McGing and Fiona Buckley. We have members of Women for Election, the 50/50 Campaign for Democracy, and the National Women's Council, who have all been pushing very hard for this. We have many activists and councillors from the Labour Party, including Sinéad Ní Uallacháin and Kirsty Hanafin from Labour Women, and students of women's studies from Trinity College Dublin. We have a huge array of people. I also welcome former Senator Mary Henry and the former Minister, Niamh Bhreathnach, who have also done a great deal to push this issue.

Many of us were in Dublin Castle two weeks ago for Deputy Kathleen Lynch's excellent conference on how to elect more women. That, too, was overbooked and could not accommodate everyone who wanted to take part. There is a real momentum on this issue. While, as Senator Keane has said, controversy surrounds the question of quotas, a momentum is clearly building in support of the principle.

The rationale behind Part 5 of the Bill is clear. It will provide, for the first time in Irish law, enforceable gender targets, or quotas, for political parties to adopt in their candidate selection procedures. It will impose significant financial sanctions on those parties that do not reach the target of 30% at the next general election. That will rise to 40% subsequently. Only 15% of candidates in the last general election were women.

Why is this necessary? At one point in recent Irish history it appeared quotas would not be necessary. In 1990, when we elected Mary Robinson as our first woman President, Ireland was in 37th place in the international world rankings of women in lower houses of parliament, when 14% of our Deputies were women. It seemed as if this would increase. Sadly, that did not prove to be the case. Our International Parliamentary Union ranking has disimproved significantly since 1990. We have fallen to 79th position in the world table, with only 25 women Deputies, or 15%. It is, as the Minister said, the highest number we have had but it is only 1% higher than in 1990. We have made no significant increase and it means the Dáil remains 85% male and has never been less than 85% male. This status quo has been stuck for a long time. The people who argue that it will change organically have stopped doing so, because it is clear that will not happen without some positive action. Claire McGing has pointed out that only 91 women in Ireland were ever elected to the Dáil in more than 90 years of the existence of the State, which is a different way of portraying the same appallingly low figure. As other speakers have said, the current Seanad is better and it looks a lot better today as the attendance is about 90%. The Minister and Senator Mac Conghail are blessed among women today. In fact, the Seanad has 18 women Members out of 60, a total of 30% exactly. The Labour group, which I am privileged to lead, has 50% female representation, six women and six men-----