Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank those who have contributed to the debate, and Senator O'Loughlin and her colleagues for proposing the debate, which is very important in terms of where we are in the process. I want to reflect on where we were on July 2020 when I took office as Minister of State with responsibility for local government and planning. We had the local elections in 2014 where around 21% of candidates elected were women. In 2019 that increased marginally to 24%, which was still significantly out of kilter with the European average of about 35%. In 2019 the number of women candidates who came forward was 562. Remarkably, that was only 28% of all the candidates who ran in the 2019 local elections. That speaks volumes in itself. Before I had the privilege of being elected to the Dáil in 2009 I was a councillor. I served as cathaoirleach of my county council in Westmeath and as chairperson of the old town council, which was abolished. I want to be absolutely certain that I have done everything to ensure that society in general is governed by the chamber that serves it and is reflected like a mirror image by that chamber in terms of gender and diversity.That is why I really want to implement policies that make a reality. When I entered office, I met with the National Women's Council of Ireland and engaged with the AILG and LAMA, a number of elected representatives and Women for Election. I heard their views about what the most pressing issues were in attracting women into politics for the betterment of society. As we all know, and we saw this through the pandemic, the more women we have to reflect society in the decision-making process, the better those decisions will be.

The current position is that councillors are officeholders. They are not employees and, therefore, are not covered by the framework of maternity supports in legislation. As was pointed out, the Local Government Act 2001 provides no specific clause for maternity leave. If someone goes on maternity leave, gets sick or is otherwise unable to perform his or her council work, if he or she does not get a vote or resolution passed by the council for six consecutive periods, he or she is deemed to have vacated his or her seat. This is exceptionally crude. What is more unacceptable and abhorrent to me as Minister of State with responsibility for local government is the fact that a young mother would have to seek a resolution or approval from her peers to look after a newborn infant. This is totally unacceptable in a modern democracy and I have made that very clear from the day I entered office and had the privilege of doing this job.

The first issue on my desk was getting the Moorhead report sorted. There was an exceptional debate in this Chamber that assisted me in trying to push that agenda of reform. In 2014, the number of local authorities reduced from 114 to 31 covering larger geographical areas, which is another major challenge for elected representatives trying to serve those communities. In addition, 80 town councils were dissolved and, therefore, a layer of local government was taken away. Again, this meant more work for county councillors. We were done one third in the number of councillors who were brought back under the revised slimmed down programme. What struck me was that in terms of the work councillors must do outside the chamber, there are 360 statutory bodies that for which they have nominations and 400 non-statutory external bodies provide approximately 2,140 nominations that are outside their work within the chamber. This shows the gravity of work our local authority members must do on a daily basis. Each local authority has more than 350 affiliated community and voluntary groups that work through the PPN network that local authority members provide support to working long hours every day. This is why at that juncture, I was very keen to get the Moorhead report over the line and get that increase that is now linked to the local authority grade. As of last October, in line with the public service, they got their increase and will get others in February and next October. This means their pay is linked to public service agreements, as it should be.

After getting the pay element of the Moorhead report agreed, my next job was to set up a group to look at the non-pay elements of the report, which I did quite quickly. It concerned how councillors do their business, the supports they have, the way meetings are run and how a better environment can be created for councillors to discharge their duties. In March 2020, the major concern I had concerned maternity leave and, therefore, I established a subgroup of that group that was comprised entirely of female councillors from across the country from every party and none, engaged with all the general secretaries of the different parties and heard their views. The subgroup met a number of times both with and without me. One thing that was very clear was that it is not one-size-fits-all. Some people say there is a very simple solution that involves amending legislation. Many fears women have were rightly articulated by Senators about what happens if they vacate their seat or take maternity leave. For example, if someone says we should just amend the Local Government Act 2001 and provide for maternity leave, what happens if a woman is at home caring for her newborn and a significant vote is going through the local authority such as a material contravention that is very tight? Is she to feel under pressure to be in the chamber if that vote is very tight? Do we expect her to do work, study and research the motion going through the local authority? We must consider all these issues when we are formulating the response. The easiest thing to do is to amend legislation and put maternity leave on the Statute Book but nobody might use it. That was my biggest concern from the outset. I want to resolve that aspect with their support and try to help the women who are going through this. Many women in the group have had babies recently and it is important to hear their experiences because lived experiences are so important in this debate. This is why we are trying to formulate a set of proposals on the back of that.

Three interwoven Acts will resolve this problem - the Local Government Act 2001, the Maternity Protection Act 1994 and the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005. This involves three Departments with which we must work. I have liaised with the Attorney General's office and those Departments over the past number of months. I expect to bring proposals for approval to Cabinet with a suite of measures that in the first instance will be supports for councillors and, second, will provide legislative change. I want to be very clear. One thing I have learned since I entered office in 2020 is that being given deadlines over which I have no control is a very dangerous business. We are trying our best to get them through as quickly as possible. I am relying on the work of the Attorney General and the co-operation of the various different Departments, which I am getting, and, in turn, getting the best proposed legislative change but, equally, I must get the supports because they are so important, as was articulated in the debate because we really need to have the supports for our local authority members. In terms of engaging with different women's groups, as Senator O'Loughlin will know as chairperson of the caucus here, we have worked and supported the caucus network through local authority members and made it more useful for them in the work they can carry out. We have met many women's groups. It was great to have the pleasure of seeing Michelle Maher and her team take first prize at the European Innovation in Politics Awards in Brussels. Europe was amazed at the work that group did in getting women interested in politics. We must look beyond this. This is about trying to get women who may not want to run for election involved. It could be a campaign manager or backroom member of a team for another woman who is going for election. We want to see our society reflected in our local authority chambers. This is what we need to work collectively to do and I am committed to that. What really bothers me is any woman having to seek permission to go on maternity leave or get extended leave. That is totally unacceptable.

Issues such as sick leave were mentioned. We are trying to look at this in the round. Hopefully, over the next few months, we can say that we have achieved an awful lot of work in local government to make it a better place for councillors to operate in, that they have better supports to do their work and that we have all worked together to do that because I do value the work of all Senators. All of them have been positive in terms of suggestions throughout this process. We will continue to work with and update Members as we, hopefully, progress to a proposal to go to Cabinet. It is imminent but when deadlines are given in politics, sometimes they are not met and sometimes they are beyond a Minister's control but we are working to achieve that. I hope I have covered the matter and, again, I thank Senators for raising these issues.