A POLICY of positive discrimination is needed to ensure more women are appointed to the judiciary, the Minister of State for Equality has said.
Speaking at the National Women’s Council of Ireland annual general meeting in Dublin yesterday, Kathleen Lynch said it was “frightening” how few women there were in positions of power in the law.
“The law . . . is the only thing that you can truly rely on and if the law is dominated by men, then how can we possibly hope to get equality before the law?” she asked.
There are 143 sitting judges in Ireland, with four vacancies, the Court Service has said, and 36, or a quarter, are women. There are two of eight at Supreme Court level, five of 35 at High Court level, 12 of 38 at the Circuit Court and 17 of 62 at the District Court.
Ms Lynch said it was “quite stark” to look at the list of judges and see how many were men.
There were enough female barristers or senior counsels that could quite easily do the job, she said.
“You couldn’t possibly appoint five judges and they all be men, no matter how well qualified; you would have to have a percentage that are women,” she said.
She said positive discrimination was needed, but she did not think legislation was required. It was a matter of a minister following through on such a policy.
The Minister said it was her job to persuade other Ministers of the need for positive discrimination.
Minister for Justice Alan Shatter had recently appointed a woman to the judiciary because of her knowledge of family law, she said, and he was “easily persuaded on these things”.
The Minister also said proposed legislation to introduce quotas for women in politics may need to be “a little tighter” than first thought.
The proposed legislation, flagged by Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan, would mean parties that did not put forward a set quota of women for election would have their State funding reduced.
Ms Lynch said they had been talking to other countries where some political parties had been willing to “take the hit” imposed for not meeting the gender quota.
Small parties here would not be able to take that hit, but larger parties might, she said.
“Maybe if you do it for a second time, the penalty might be far more severe,” she said.
Susan McKay, chief executive of the National Women’s Council of Ireland, called for the reversal of cuts to a grant scheme for women’s and lone parents’ groups.
Funding for the groups had dropped by 50 per cent, or €434,000, since 2007, she said.
The HSE’s plans to stop funding the Rape Crisis Network and Safe Ireland, the network for women’s refuges and support services, should also be reversed.
“The process of allocating these funds began during the dying days of the last government and should be reviewed by the new Government, which has given commitments to respect the importance of women’s equality during the current recession,” Ms McKay said.
