Caít Keane (Fine Gael)

I ask the Minister to examine the issue in respect of amendment No.32 and the local elections. I do not know if it can be done in the manner recommended by Senator Power. When the Minister was here the last day and we spoke about parties doing this voluntarily, he stated that it would not be possible due to the funding issue. Senator Power thinks she may have got around that by including the following local elections and the general election. The amount of funding was allocated under section 4 of the 2001 Act, but I will leave that to the Minister.

There is precedent for having a voluntary code in legislation. A voluntary code was agreed in the Energy (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2011 for the ESB and the power producing groups. I ask the Minister to consider the voluntary side of it again. If we write it into the Bill, we will try to shame the parties into it. If it is possible to do it, I ask the Minister to look at it again. Obviously we are not asking him to do it if it is not possible to do so. I understand what he said the last day about current legislation, but I would like him to examine that 2011 Bill to see if there is anything in that which would allow for this to be included.

I will wait to hear what the Minister has to say about deleting the quota after reaching a certain limit. I am a reluctant convert to quotas and initially did not believe in them at all, but having looked at the statistics and at those countries which have managed to elect more women, it is the only way that it is being done. Senator Power's amendment includes the reference "following the next two general elections" for the quota of elected women. I do not think there is any woman who would agree with quotas for the sake of them. A person gets elected because he or she is a good politician and wants to be there. One swallow does not make a summer, and one election would not make a summer either for women. Perhaps the Minister might consider that.

Even though I would like to agree with the Seanad issue, I do not know how it would be possible to do it. A court case was taken against Portmarnock Golf Club in respect of admitting women into private clubs. Many of the nominations to the Seanad come from private bodies. I do not know how the Minister would get around the legislation, given the way it is drafted at present. If we have a methodology for nomination to the Oireachtas, we could do it for that, but that would not be fair on those who had to come through the nominating system from the private bodies. There might be a difficulty with this. However, it might give us an opportunity to examine the system of nominations to the Seanad in general. The debate on the reorganisation of government must be examined, because it is not working properly in its current format. The nominating bodies are too closed. The institutes of technology are not included in the university section.

This will lead to a wider debate and I thank the Senator for putting down the amendment. However, I cannot support it in its current format. I look forward to the Minister's contribution on it. We should support anything that can be done to promote women in politics, especially at local level. Only 17% of county councillors are women and we always recommend a bottom-up approach. If we do not start at local level, how will we have the required number of women at general elections? We really have to take a bottom-up approach with this.

I congratulate the Minister. I was in local government for 20 years and I heard this debate going on through the years, and it is only since the Minister took office that we have grabbed the bull by the horns and said we are going to do this. I thank him for bringing it forward and I look forward to his response.