A chara, – I'm very surprised at Barry Walsh's (February 4th) opposition to quotas for women candidates in Irish elections. I thought that argument had been won.
Of the current 25 elected councillors in Kildare County Council, only two are female – a paltry 8 per cent. Furthermore, of the 24 candidates who contested the last three general elections in South Kildare, only one was female (4 per cent).
If there is an increase in female candidates for the local elections it is only because political parties are getting ready for the quota being introduced for our next general election. Mr Walsh is correct that the fault doesn’t just lie with selection conventions, we also have the inequalities of cash, confidence, culture and childcare.
Forcing political parties to have a quota of female candidates will force them to engage with these issues also. If a woman cannot accept a nomination because she has no money or has to sort out childcare then the political party will have to help her sort them. Without quotas, she becomes the high-hanging fruit and 50 per cent of the population will continue to be shut out of representative politics. – Is mise,
ORLA O’NEILL,
Kilcullen,
Co Kildare.
Sir, – Noirin Clancy's letter was heavy on rhetoric and light on facts (February 3rd). She seems to suggest the reason there are so few female candidates in the local elections is because they are unable to get through local party conventions. This is simply untrue.
As an ordinary Fianna Fáil member, I have kept track of my party’s conventions and at the last count (nearly 100 conventions) 17 per cent of our selected candidates are female. What proportion of prospective candidates who contested convention were female? 55 out of 333 – or 17 per cent. In other words, females were just as likely to be selected as male candidates – the reason there are so few is because they are not putting themselves forwards. And the reasons for that will not be solved by gender quotas.
We in Fianna Fáil have arguably the most democratic selection system of all the major parties. What Ms Clancy appears to imply is that party HQs, not ordinary members, should be primarily responsible for candidate selection. Is that not an unwelcome centralisation of power and a completely anti-democratic measure? – Yours, etc,
DJ MOORE,
Craddockstown West,
Naas,
Co Kildare.