Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Under the current law the proportion of male and female local authority representatives on a VEC must mirror the proportion of the total number of male and female members of those county, city and town districts when added together. The existing system has given rise to practical difficulties, particularly where a number of bodies come together to elect people to one board. Difficulties at local level have arisen, particularly when a casual vacancy occurs and doubts have been created about the validity of actions of boards that do not reflect the correct gender proportions. In the course of this debate, my concerns on this issue have been ones of practicality and not ones of principle.

On Committee Stage in the other House, I said that I personally favoured the introduction of gender quotas in some form for local elections. Having reflected on the arguments articulated by Senator Bacik on Second Stage and by others on previous points in this conversation, I now propose amendment No. 4. The effect of the amendment will be to compel the Minister of the day to make regulations - statutory instruments - governing the election of local authority members to ETBs. Those regulations may provide for gender balance by creating separate panels for men and women. They will also empower the Minister as far as possible to specify a minimum number of women and men who must be elected by each local authority. The amendment provides that in making the regulations the Minister must have regard to the objective of at least 40% of each gender being elected by the local authorities. This reflects Government policy on gender balance on State boards and I believe it may attract cross-party support also, but that remains to be seen.

I acknowledge that as a society we have further work to do to ensure proper representation of women at all levels in the public and private sectors. However, I believe that measures such as this and the recently introduced Electoral (Amendment)(Political Funding) Act are important steps on that journey. I hope my proposals will meet the concerns underlying Senator Bacik's amendments and other expressions of interest.