Terry Leyden (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is a great privilege to be in this House on the centenary of the 1918 election. It was rightly a seismic event. After seven years without a general election, the changes which had taken place in Irish society were laid bare in one important event which shook the foundations.

In remembering the 1918 election, the single greatest theme which emerges is democratisation across a host of areas in the participation of women, both within the electorate and as candidates and the participation of young working-class men. In early 1918, the Representation of the People Act had granted the right to vote to women aged over 30 years, which was discriminatory, who met a certain property requirement, and all men aged over 21 years. They were not even generous enough to give the vote to women on the same terms as men.

This saw Ireland’s electorate grow from 700,000 to more than 1.9 million. These newly franchised groups spoke out against the militarism and conscription which threatened to absorb even more of the youth of Ireland. They spoke out in democratic acceptance of the need for the establishment of the first Dáil and indeed independence. They spoke out in electing a woman for the first time. With regard to women’s suffrage, it is accepted, 100 years on from that moment, that we have still not completed the journey which saw its first major milestone achieved in 1918.

It is correct that we should use this milestone to reflect on the road ahead, but we should see the achievements of 1918, and indeed 1922 for what they were, which was a step forward. One hundred years ago Éamon de Valera secured a democratic mandate which was heard throughout the world. In the 1918 general election, the party he led won a victory so dramatic and so overwhelming that it changed the direction of history.

His was a towering personality which won for the cause of Irish independence a profile and a respect never before shown for a revolutionary movement in a small country. The victory in 1918 is the moment when the momentum towards the establishment of an independent Irish State started building. We in Ireland were the first colony and we were the beginning of the end of the British Empire. This was a major achievement.

There is no political figure in Irish history before or since de Valera who overcame so many obstacles on his way to becoming a national leader. I should add that Count Plunkett, who was elected in the 1917 by-election in the winter and snow, was the first republican to be elected, from County Roscommon, but that was prior to the new voting arrangements.

It is important to recognise, honour and show our gratitude for the pioneering work of the suffrage movement that secured women’s right to vote. It involved women like Margaret Cousins from Boyle, County Roscommon, and Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, who founded the Irish Women’s Franchise League, and Countess Markievicz, the first woman elected to parliament in a general election in 1918. She was appointed as a Minister and we had to wait until Charles J. Haughey to appoint Máire Geoghegan-Quinn as a Minister in 1979, which was a major step by a very progressive Taoiseach. No Taoiseach before him had appointed a woman as Minister since Countess Markievicz. Máire Geoghegan-Quinn was a great Minister, and Mary O’Rourke was appointed after her.

I regret that the Fine Gael-Labour Party Government tried to abolish this Seanad which has had more women representatives than the Dáil. It would have been a major loss to women in this country had this House been abolished because women are making a major contribution in this House and will continue to do so. Had Enda Kenny had his way, this House would have been abolished and there would have been no women Senators here today had the unprogressive Fine Gael-Labour Party Government, which never did anything for women in this country-----