Ivana Bacik (Independent)

As one who goes through the university panel, where people do not get nominated by anyone or rather they get nominated by ten graduates of the university, I accept it is a very different system. Certainly, there would be no place for this in the university panel. My understanding was that, generally, there is no place for this on the vocational panels.

A further reason we did not consider this is that the IPU looks at the Lower House or the single House of Parliament, which was our focus. This was also, frankly, because the Seanad has a much better record. As we all know, 30% of our Members are now women and the Taoiseach's nomination process effectively provides for a type of in-built voluntary target arrangement. We did not see this as being as imperative here.

In terms of the local elections, like Senator Keane, I would ask the Minister to reconsider this area. I totally accept the point about funding and the difficulty of providing for a relevant and pertinent sanction. It is not as clear-cut as with general elections. However, it is very important that we would ensure greater numbers of women come forward in the local elections. I was encouraged at the Dublin Castle conference on this issue in January that the general secretaries pointed out they would have to increase the numbers of women coming forward in the local elections in order to ensure they would reach the 30% quota for the general election. We may find this will happen in practice but I would certainly like to find whether there was some way we could extend the principle to the local elections.

In response to an earlier point, this is not top-down engineering of any kind. A great deal of evidence has been gathered over many years by many groups nationally, not all in Dublin, such as the 50-50 group recently formed in Sligo and 50-50 by 2020 campaigns all over Ireland. This is something women are pushing for. I have been lobbied on this by many women, as I know have others. It is not top-down. There has been a great groundswell to which the political parties and the Minister have responded. I pay him great credit for that.