CALLS HAVE been made for the Government to change “ludicrous legislation” that restricts the number of women entitled to serve on vocational education committees.
The controversial gender issue was highlighted at a special meeting of Limerick City Council yesterday where a long-standing member of the local authority was forced to step down from a position that she has held for more than a decade.
Independent councillor Kathleen Leddin was nominated to serve on Limerick City VEC following last June’s local election, along with councillors Orla McLoughlin of Labour and Fine Gael’s Maria Byrne. But she was forced to resign her nomination after it was found that the ratio of men to women on the VEC committee was in breach of regulations.
The Composition of Vocational Education Committee Regulations 2004 was introduced through statutory instrument in September 2004.
The regulations require the proportion of men to women on the committee to be the same as “the number of the aggregate members who are men bears to the number of the aggregate members who are women” on the relevant council.
This means the ratio of women to men on a VEC committee cannot exceed the ratio of women to men on the relevant city or county council, when added to the number on any relevant town council.
In practice, if a council has a low percentage of women, the local VEC committee will also have low female representation.
At present there are three women among the 17 elected members of Limerick City Council.
Ms Leddin and Ms Byrne have both served on the committee of the VEC since 1999, while Ms McLoughlin, who was elected for the first time in June, is a qualified teacher and works full time for the Department of Education.
Following a special meeting of Limerick City Council yesterday. Ms Leddin offered to resign from her position on the VEC with fellow Independent councillor John Gilligan taking her place.
Speaking after her move, Ms Leddin said the circumstances were “unfortunate” and came about as a result of a Government decision. “This is a ridiculous situation that the Government has reduced the ratio of people serving on the VEC.
“I feel we [the women members of council] should have banded together and taken a stand but I don’t wish to be burning my bra at this stage,” said Ms Leddin.
Calls were also made at yesterday’s meeting for a letter to be written to Minister of Education Batt O’Keefe outlining the council’s difficulties with the gender balance law.
Fine Gael councillor Diarmuid Scully said the “ludicrous legislation” had no place in the modern world. “We should nominate the best people for the job no matter what gender they are. This legislation should be scrapped immediately,” he said.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Education and Science said the chief executives of VECs and city and county managers were instructed, in advance of the local elections, that elections and appointments to VECs should be made in accordance with the regulations.
“In an e-mail to all CEOs of 29th June 2009, CEOs were asked, where a VEC had not been constituted in accordance with the regulations, to advise the city/county manager that the committee was invalidly constituted and that appropriate steps were to be taken to rectify this in advance of the committee’s next meeting,” she said.