Maria Byrne (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister, Deputy Madigan, to the House and thank her for all the fine work she is putting into the Vótáil 100 programme. I also compliment all our senatorial colleagues, and especially Senator Ivana Bacik, as a the chairperson of the committee. Many worthwhile projects have been put together to date. I recently attended a seminar in the Royal Irish Academy, at which there were students from a school in Limerick who had submitted a project related to Vótáil 100 and women to the young scientist exhibition. The facts and figures they had come up were interesting. During the past 100 years 1,179 males and 114 females have been elected to Dáil Éireann and there have been 801 males and 99 females in the Seanad, with the females making up 11% of that membership of the Seanad and 9% of that membership of the Dáil. The percentages for female Members is quite low.

The first advocacy for votes for women started in 1847. The Belfast Ladies' Institute was founded in 1846. The Representation of the People Act came into effect on 6 February 1918, which made it legal for women to run for election. Prior to that, the Local Government Act of 1898 allowed females to run for and vote in local elections but not to do so for elections to the Dáil. There was the militant and non-militant campaign that was stated leading up to the granting of the vote in 1918.

It is important that we encourage and support females to engage in politics. When I ran for the council elections in 1999, of the 70 candidates, there were only six females and three of them were elected. For 15 of the 17 years I served on my local council, of the 21 councillors, only three were female and when we moved from that number to having a council comprising 40 councillors, only six were female. Therefore, the female representation is quite low. Senator Maura Hopkins alluded to it possibly being related to people having young families and finding it hard to get support.It is very important that we, as females, support and help one another. In any walk of life, work and coming up with ideas is a collaborative effort. People often view bouncing ideas off one another as supportive, which is most important.

I want to speak about Anna and Thomas Haslam who started the Dublin Women's Suffrage Association that later become the Irish women's association. They were a very inspirational couple who started the idea of suffrage and encouraged people to get involved.

The Minister has only recently been appointed and I congratulate her for hitting the ground running and getting in touch with her brief. She has given her all to the centenary celebrations and become heavily involved. She has taken a very keen interest in everything that is taking place. There are many national and local events. I encourage as many colleagues as possible to hold events in their own constituencies because an awful lot of people are not aware of suffrage and what people went through to secure votes for females. They are not aware of the important fact that before women won the vote they could not own land or go to university, and people were prevented from becoming doctors or nurses. In addition, despite the achievement of limited women's suffrage, women could not own land until legislation was introduced in 1970. There are many things that we need to highlight, in particular the suffrage that females have gone through. It is great to see so many females in positions of high office and CEOs of companies. Females are to the fore in many spheres but we still need to encourage females to stand for election and provide support.

Finally, I wish to pay a compliment to the former Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, now EU Commissioner Phil Hogan, for introducing gender quotas. The measure was introduced by a Fine Gael Government. In 2012, we brought in the requirement for political parties to select 30% female candidates, which will apply for the next general election but will increase to 40% for the subsequent general election. A gender quota is a great incentive and lends support.