Government leaders are set to face extra pressure to promote female TDs as junior ministers amid backlash over the gender balance at Cabinet.
On Thursday, Taoiseach Micheál Martin announced the members of his Government – with three women appointed to senior ministerial positions, one fewer than in the last Government.
Fine Gael’s Helen McEntee was appointed Minister for Education and Youth, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (FG) is the new Minister for Health, while Fianna Fáil’s Norma Foley has taken up the role of Minister for Children and Disability. Mary Butler (FF) has been appointed Chief Whip, which means she attends Cabinet.
In the previous government, Helen McEntee, Heather Humphreys, Norma Foley and Catherine Martin were all ministers running departments.
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The announcement led to severe criticism from the opposition, as well as advocacy groups - and some from within Fianna Fáil itself, seen to be under more pressure as it has fewer women in Cabinet than Fine Gael.
Fiona O’Loughlin, who served in the last Seanad and is now seeking another term, said the bottom line was that many Fianna Fáil women were not elected.
Nonetheless she said that following the appointment of just one woman as a full minister by Fianna Fáil, she “would have the expectation of that being redressed on Wednesday when the junior positions are announced”.
Others in the party were more directly critical of the decision, including its leader on Dublin City Council, Racheal Batten, who said there seemed to be an “unconscious bias” at play.
She said that it was not enough to have “consolation prizes” in the form of junior ministerial appointments. “I do think the party needs to reflect on why out of all the political parties it has returned the least per cent of females having run the most.”
Some members of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party were privately highly critical of the organisation for failing to adopt strategies to ensure more women were elected and promoted.
Mr Martin, one said, had picked what he believed was the best team for the country but said that “aesthetically it’s a sh*tshow”. A second source said it was “depressing”, arguing that “no effective action has been taken to address the gender imbalance in the party in the last ten years”.
“I think the Cabinet picks just reflect the deeper problems the party has,” they added, saying: “It will force Micheál in terms of the juniors.”
Campaigners say that the reduced number of female Government ministers is a ‘culturally embedded problem’ around women’s participation in politics.
According to Women for Election, said that since the foundation of the State there have been 25 women who have served as senior ministers in Cabinet, compared to 225 men.
Katie Deegan, the group’s spokeswoman communications manager for the group, said there was a “deep-rooted systemic issue” around appointing appointment of women to ministerial positions.
She described the reduced number of women ministers as “perplexing”.
[ Cabinet appointments criticised as only three women become MinistersOpens in new window ]
“It’s 2025, not the Stone Age. This simply isn’t good enough,” she said.
Kate O’Connell, a former Fine Gael TD who unsuccessfully ran as an independent candidate in the last election, said it has been about 10 years since Enda Kenny introduced gender quotas.
“Despite this, still in terms of the overall Dáil make-up, we’re not breaching that 25 per cent. And despite women being elected, within that pool they’re not being picked as ministers,” she said.
“And they [Government] tend to say that ‘isn’t it great we’ve so many women as super junior ministers’. But that’s an attempt to improve optics.”
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald and Labour leader Ivana Bacik both criticised the lack of women at in senior ministerial positions at Cabinet.
Bacik said there were the same number of Ministers with the name James as there were women.
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