Feargal Quinn (Independent)

It may have been 27. How can a quota be applied to Independent people running for election? There are challenges and it is not easy to solve. Must political parties and the voters take some of the blame themselves? By definition political parties are purely tactical machines. I recently read that in the UK the Liberal Democrats lost disproportionately in constituencies in which they ran a female candidate. They then changed tactics for the next election and did not run the same campaign. While I do not have the figures for Ireland, given that political parties are so tactical I would guess that they decided not to run female candidates in certain constituencies as they had a better chance with a particular male candidate. While it is hard to prove, the parties could be doing something similar here in Ireland. While political parties are the target of the legislation - they will need to run a female candidate or lose funding - and are supposedly anti-female institutions, they are in fact still getting funding.

I am sure the Minister will have read a recent article by Daniel K. Sullivan in The Irish Times, in which he stated: "Take the constituency of Phil Hogan, Minister for the Environment - unless one of his recently elected male party colleagues stands down, Fine Gael will be compelled to run an extra candidate where there is no realistic chance of a fourth seat and, in so doing, will imperil at least one of the party's three seats, in the face of a strong SF and FF challenge."