Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Innovation in Politics Awards 2021 take place tonight in Brussels. Politicians from across Europe will be recognised for their creative and courageous political projects that our improve our lives as citizens. The awards are based on the European values of social balance, democracy and human rights. A jury of over 1,000 European citizens have evaluated 413 projects. There are 90 finalists and there will be nine winners. We have an Irish contender in the See Her Elected project, which is a finalist in the democracy category. It is about supporting women to move into local representation, to be a public representative for their communities.

See Her Elected is a community-led, rural initiative, particularly focused on rural and regional areas in regard to how we get women to come forward. The project manager is Dr. Michelle Maher, who will be in Brussels tonight, I am sure on tenterhooks. The project supports women to come forward. Some of the challenges in rural areas, of which, I am sure, the Deputy Leader is aware, include attracting women coming through some of the more sporting networks, which is an area from which many of our male colleagues come to the fore very naturally. How do we support this in our rural and regional areas? In Roscommon-Galway, we have a number of community groups and Tidy Towns associations which are very strong driving forces and at the backbone of which are women who volunteer and give time to improve their communities. These are the groups that we should be seeing coming forward.

I also want to ask that on Friday, when Senators will, probably, be back in their own areas, they would wear purple for International Day of Disabled Persons. Roughly 14% of people in each of our counties, including Roscommon and Galway, have a disability. In Roscommon, RosFM is working with Roscommon County Council on a number of events in that area. If people could support it, that would be fantastic. Many disabilities are hidden as well.