Parties to be penalised if number of women does not increase

POLITICAL PARTIES will have to implement a 30 per cent gender quota for general election candidates, or else face severe financial penalties, under planned new legislation.

State funding for parties will be cut by half unless at least 30 per cent of the candidates they put forward are women, Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan has said.

Mr Hogan will shortly ask Cabinet to sign off on proposed legislation under which parties will face a 50 per cent reduction in funds if they do not hit the gender target.

“It’s a groundbreaking political opportunity for the country in terms of increasing particularly the participation rate of women in Irish politics. This is the carrot and the big stick approach. If you don’t deliver you’ll get your funding cut, and it’s quite a serious penalty to be in breach of this particular proposal,” he said.

Mr Hogan said the threat to cut funding was the only way to “concentrate the mind” of political parties. The measure will be attached to promised legislation banning corporate donations, likely to be published before the Dáil’s summer recess.

Asked if he was anticipating any negative reaction to the proposal, Mr Hogan said he was not. He claimed Fine Gael efforts to ensure greater participation by women candidates in the 2009 local elections “brought us greater results from the electorate”. He said: “So there’s a vested interest on behalf of the political system to ensure there’s a greater balance of gender in terms of participation in Irish politics.”

The proposal has been discussed a number of times at Cabinet meetings, during which the Coalition’s senior women Ministers, Joan Burton of Labour and Frances Fitzgerald of Fine Gael, were vocal on the issue.

Mr Hogan acknowledged their input while stressing he had initiated the measure. “I brought forward the proposal and obviously women, particularly Minister Burton and Minister Fitzgerald, would be very strongly supportive of it.” He also said Cabinet was “very supportive”.

He said the proposed legislation would apply at national level “initially”. As State funding of political parties was based on the vote received in the previous national election, it might be difficult to implement at local level, he said.

“But I think that there will be a huge pressure on political parties to replicate this at local level once it’s implemented at national level.”

In 2009, Senator Ivana Bacik produced a report recommending parties should face financial penalties unless a third of their general election candidates were women.

Exchequer funding for 2010 was more than €13,480,000. Fianna Fáil received €5,200,780; Fine Gael €4,484,378; Labour €2,163,293; the Greens €801,999 and Sinn Féin €830,298.

The Dáil has 166 seats, 25 of which are occupied by women. In February’s general election, some 15 per cent of the 566 candidates were women. More than 16 per cent of Fine Gael’s candidates were women, with 25 per cent from Labour; 14.6 per cent from Fianna Fáil and 19.5 per cent from Sinn Féin.

For Independents and others, including the United Left Alliance, women represented 10.6 per cent of candidates. The Green Party’s figure was 18.6 per cent.

The programme for government said public funding for political parties would be tied to the level of participation by women as candidates those parties achieve, but did not set targets or detail penalties.

Mr Hogan noted Taoiseach Enda Kenny, in opposition, had attempted to implement quotas of women candidates in Fine Gael, “with mixed results”. Lucinda Creighton and several other Fine Gael women opposed the measure, with Ms Creighton describing it as an “easy solution to a very complex problem”.