Ivana Bacik

Electoral (Amendment)(Political Funding) Bill 2011: Second Stage

Thursday, 2 February 2012

Senator Ivana Bacik:     I am delighted to be here to speak on Second Stage of the Electoral (Amendment)(Political Funding) Bill 2011. I am particularly pleased and grateful to the Minister that the Bill is being introduced in the Seanad. It is most appropriate that it is introduced here.

The Bill will make important reforms to political donations, increase transparency in our system of political donations and place important and significant new restrictions on corporate donations. We all very much welcome those changes.

I want to focus on Part 5, relating to State funding of political parties and gender balance, about which I have already communicated many times with the Minister and I am very grateful for his generous and full responses to my submissions to him. I am also grateful to the Labour Party spokesperson on the environment in the Seanad, Senator Denis Landy, who has generously given way to me and Senators Susan O’Keeffe and Aideen Hayden, who particularly wanted to speak about Part 5 of the Bill and to focus on the historic change it will bring about in Irish politics.

Before discussing Part 5 of the Bill I welcome, as others have done, the large group of men and women who have worked for many years to see the change brought about by the Bill happen and who are here to support it. They are in the Gallery and in the audio-visual and overflow room, because we could not accommodate them in the Chamber. They include academics such as Professor Yvonne Galligan, Claire McGing and Fiona Buckley. We have members of Women for Election, the 50/50 Campaign for Democracy, and the National Women’s Council, who have all been pushing very hard for this. We have many activists and councillors from the Labour Party, including Sinéad Ní Uallacháin and Kirsty Hanafin from Labour Women, and students of women’s studies from Trinity College Dublin. We have a huge array of people. I also welcome former Senator Mary Henry and the former Minister, Niamh Bhreathnach, who have also done a great deal to push this issue.

Many of us were in Dublin Castle two weeks ago for Deputy Kathleen Lynch’s excellent conference on how to elect more women. That, too, was overbooked and could not accommodate everyone who wanted to take part. There is a real momentum on this issue. While, as Senator Keane has said, controversy surrounds the question of quotas, a momentum is clearly building in support of the principle.

The rationale behind Part 5 of the Bill is clear. It will provide, for the first time in Irish law, enforceable gender targets, or quotas, for political parties to adopt in their candidate selection procedures. It will impose significant financial sanctions on those parties that do not reach the target of 30% at the next general election. That will rise to 40% subsequently. Only 15% of candidates in the last general election were women.

Why is this necessary? At one point in recent Irish history it appeared quotas would not be necessary. In 1990, when we elected Mary Robinson as our first woman President, Ireland was in 37th place in the international world rankings of women in lower houses of parliament, when 14% of our Deputies were women. It seemed as if this would increase. Sadly, that did not prove to be the case. Our International Parliamentary Union ranking has disimproved significantly since 1990. We have fallen to 79th position in the world table, with only 25 women Deputies, or 15%. It is, as the Minister said, the highest number we have had but it is only 1% higher than in 1990. We have made no significant increase and it means the Dáil remains 85% male and has never been less than 85% male. This status quo has been stuck for a long time. The people who argue that it will change organically have stopped doing so, because it is clear that will not happen without some positive action. Claire McGing has pointed out that only 91 women in Ireland were ever elected to the Dáil in more than 90 years of the existence of the State, which is a different way of portraying the same appallingly low figure. As other speakers have said, the current Seanad is better and it looks a lot better today as the attendance is about 90%. The Minister and Senator Mac Conghail are blessed among women today. In fact, the Seanad has 18 women Members out of 60, a total of 30% exactly. The Labour group, which I am privileged to lead, has 50% female representation, six women and six men—–

Senator David Norris:     Thanks to the University of Dublin constituency.

Senator Ivana Bacik:     I thank Senator Norris. This is as a result of positive action as regards the nominees of the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste. In any case, international rankings are based on the lower house in parliaments or on those parliaments which are unicameral. We know that the Seanad has not increased representation organically and we know that the Dáil will not do so unless positive action is taken. The evidence from other countries bears this out. Countries ranked around the same place as us in 1990, at 30% representation, have increased their rankings significantly through adoption of positive action measures. I refer in particular to Belgium, which is now ranked 11th in the world, with 39% women in parliament and Spain, now 16th, with 36% women. It is not just a case of looking at the Scandinavian countries, although they are very important because they were among the first to adopt positive action measures. We can now look at countries which were at the same level as us in 1990 and which have increased their representation.

The very clear lack of women Members in the Dáil and Seanad was something that struck me forcefully when I was first elected in 2007 and in December 2008, to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the first election in which women could vote, in December 1918, and when Constance Markievicz was elected, I initiated an Oireachtas women’s day in the Dáil Chamber, inviting in all women still living who had ever been elected to the Oireachtas to be present in the Chamber. A very striking photograph was taken. In recognition of this historic legislation, I ask the Minister if we might arrange to have that photograph displayed in Leinster House. I had previously arranged this with former Minister of State with responsibility for equality, Mary Alexandra White, but the Government fell before the photograph could be displayed in Leinster House. I would like to see this happen as it is a very important and striking visual representation of a Chamber nearly half full of women.

Senators:  Hear, hear.

Senator Ivana Bacik:     This sends out a very important message.

Other speakers, including the Minister, have referred to the report of which I was an author and with which I was ably assisted by Aoife O’Driscoll of my office. The report was adopted unanimously by the justice committee in 2009. The report deals with women’s participation in politics. I am happy to say that instead of gathering dust, it has indeed fed into this legislation. I refer to the sub-committee hearings leading up to the publication of the report at which we heard numerous arguments, particularly from Professor Yvonne Galligan, about why we should be bringing in legislation like this. As she told us, the current lack of women candidates is a serious restriction to voter choice. She and others have identified the five Cs as the obstacles to women’s representation, namely, child care, cash, confidence, culture and candidate selection procedures. As other speakers have said, we made a series of recommendations aimed at addressing problems of child care, difficulties with raising cash, the introduction of mentoring programmes and leadership training programmes to address women’s lack of confidence. It is more difficult to address the cultural issue. We looked at examples from elsewhere, from Iceland, where a public advertising campaign was held with prominent politicians of each gender confounding gender stereotypes, with images of a male politician wearing high heels and a female politician Minister shaving in front of a mirror—–

A Senator:  That is an option for the Minister.

Senator Ivana Bacik:     Hopefully we will see something similar as part of the public awareness programme designed to encourage more women to enter politics—–

Deputy Phil Hogan:     I have certain boundaries I will not cross.

Senator Ivana Bacik:     It is all about transgressing boundaries. In Norway, a national databank of potential women candidates was established in order to get over the perceived difficulty that women do not put themselves forward for election. The most significant recommendation was the need for the sort of legislation we are discussing today. We recommended the model of an opportunity quota which is quite a modest proposal, already adopted in over 100 countries and first used in Latin America, in Argentina. It is not a European invention but it is relatively modest, that enhances voter choice by increasing the numbers of women going forward to face voters in an election but which does not restrict them by placing a quota on the numbers of seats in parliament, something which would be problematic in this country and under European law.

The Seanad held two debates following publication of our report, in April and May 2010, and I note the significant cross-party support at that time for the principle of that legislation. Labour Women also published a Bill to bring forward the same principle and therefore, a good deal of work has been done on this legislation. The commitment to introduce this legislation was placed in the programme for Government and the Minister introduced the Bill in December 2011. I am delighted it is being initiated in the Seanad.

The Minister has referred to the public debate since the Bill was published. I wish to briefly mention the argument that it might be unconstitutional. Like the Minister, I believe there is no substance to this argument and I have quite robustly contested that view in the Sunday Independent on the basis that there is no basis for it. To suggest that a political party has a right to any particular level of State funding is misguided and there is no premise for it in the Constitution which does not in fact recognise political parties. Indeed, the freedom of association is very restrictively framed but I think this can be surmounted.

On the issues of whether the Bill goes far enough, I accept the Minister’s point that 30% was the target we recommended in 2009. It is more ambitious for some parties than others. Clearly, the Labour Party is already close to that figure but I accept that for some parties it will be much more difficult to reach and therefore it needs to be a realistic but achievable target, given the level of sanction.

I suggest we should look again at extending the provisions of the Bill to include local and European elections, as recommended in our report. I can see the difficulty with the funding issue but this might be reviewed. We might wish to review the sunset clause. In practice, this has tended to lapse in any case. Denmark, for example, removed the law on quotas because they had reached a level of women’s representation that was self-sustaining. Once a critical mass in politics is achieved, it will sustain itself.

I thank the Minister for introducing this Bill and I thank all colleagues. I hope we will have all-party support in this House. We know from experience that this Bill is necessary, that the sort of measures it introduces is the best way to increase the numbers of women in politics to ensure our democracy will no longer be unrepresentative and incomplete.

Electoral (Amendment)(Political Funding) Bill 2011: Committee Stage (Resumed)

Tuesday, 21 February 2012

Senator Jillian van Turnhout:     I move amendment No. 31:

In page 25, line 35, to delete “30 per cent” and substitute “40 per cent”.

…

Senator Ivana Bacik:     Regretfully, I oppose the amendment although my gut is with Senator van Turnhout. As the Minister pointed out, in the report I authored for the justice committee on women’s participation in politics in 2009, from which we have all been quoting, the model recommended was the original Belgian model derived from the 1994 Smet-Tobback law which stipulated a figure of one third. At the time the recommendation seemed relatively radical and it is great to be debating against a more radical alternative of 40% now. However, the Belgian model provides us with a useful starting point. I am glad the figure will rise to 40% in Belgium and it took quite some time to rise to the current status of 50% following the 2002 law. However, Belgium has had a quota of 30% in place since 1994 and it has had the desired effect in moving the numbers upwards.

A strong report published by the Interparliamentary Union on gender sensitive parliaments examined this topic and referred to some countries which have moved to a figure of 50%. I am keen to see us going in that direction. As the leader of a group in the Seanad with 50% women representation and as a member of a party with 100% female MEPs, that is, all three of them—–

Senator Fiach Mac Conghail:     So far.

Senator Ivana Bacik:     —– the target of 30% is not especially radical for the Labour Party and perhaps it will be a little too easy for us. However, it is different for other parties and this was why the conference of the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, was so important. The conference concluded that it will be quite a challenge for other parties to reach 30%. We want this to be realistic. As the Interparliamentary Union report noted, the key point is that sanctions are in place, that the teeth are in the legislation and that parties which do not meet the required target of 30% rising to 40% will be subject to sanction. This will make the legislation effective. While I appreciate the sentiment with which Deputy van Turnhout brings forward the amendment and I have a good deal of instinctive support for it, I believe the version of the Bill before us recommended in 2009 is a more practical and workable model.

 

 

 

Electoral (Amendment)(Political Funding) Bill 2011: Committee Stage (Resumed)

Wednesday, 29 February 2012

Senator Ivana Bacik:     I am delighted to have an opportunity to discuss a couple of important issues to do with the Bill covered in this group of amendments. The two issues cover the idea of a sunset clause and extending the remit of the legislation to cover local and, potentially, Seanad elections.

I will take up a couple of the points made by Senator Rónán Mullen who I am glad to hear supports the aim of ensuring greater participation by women in politics because for a while, I was not sure if he did.

…     Certainly, amendment No. 37 in his name is rather different from the sunset clause recommended by Senator Averil Power and in our 2009 report since it is his presumption that the legislation will not continue unless this is provided for by a resolution.

Having listened carefully to Senator Rónán Mullen whom I did not interrupt, I want to make a couple of points. All the legislation seeks to do - it is a moderate proposal - is to provide targets for political parties when selecting election candidates. It does not intervene between voters and candidates, rather it intervenes between political parties and the candidates they select. The Senator speaks about the nanny state and restrictions on voter choice, but in the real world political parties are the gatekeepers in respect of voters’ choices. As I documented in the 2009 report - it has been well documented also by Professor Galligan and others - under the current system there is quite a number of constituencies - five out of 43 in the 2007 elections - in which voters have not been able to vote for a woman. There was no woman candidate on the slate in these five constituencies which, by the way, encompassed both rural and urban areas.

There is an obstruction which is presented largely by political parties in closing the gates to women candidates, not overtly or deliberately but because of the old boy culture and all those matters about which we have spoken which militate against women in either coming forward or being brought forward. All the legislation seeks to do is ensure political parties will no longer hold the gates closed against women. It does not impose any restriction on voters who may vote for whomsoever they wish. It requires certain rules to be to applied by political parties in the selection of candidates.

The legislation is evidence based. This is not a whimsical idea that we have plucked from the air. It is based on solid evidence, comprehensive reports produced over many years. It is based on the position in over 100 states that have adopted similar measures. As Senator Cáit Keane pointed out, unfortunately, it seems such measures are required to further women’s participation in politics, either through voluntary adoption by political parties as has happened in some Scandinavian countries or by legislation.

Moving to the issue of the sunset clause, certainly it is well established and there is nothing embarrassing about it. One finds it in financial and medical authorisation legislation. One also finds it in many areas of the law and it is not, in any way, an unusual idea. It is also linked, when one speaks about gender laws, with temporary special measures to further participation of an under-represented group and it was in that spirit that we recommended a sunset clause in 2009. As I mentioned on the last occasion, a recent report by the Inter-Parliamentary Union on gender sensitive parliaments refers to evidence, following the application of a sunset clause, of a falling back of levels in some countries, and this alarms me. When we were carrying out research in 2009, the evidence was that when there was a critical mass, as had happened in Denmark, one could then move to operate a sunset clause and remove the quota rule. Perhaps I am now a little more cautious. While I agree in principle with the idea of a sunset clause, I can see there may be different evidence as more and more countries adopt legislation on quotas. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response. Perhaps the issue of the sunset clause could be considered.

Turning to the issue of the extension of the legislation to the local and Seanad elections, Senator Keane dealt very well with the Seanad issue. In 2009 we did not recommend extension to the Seanad precisely because our focus was on political parties as gatekeepers and because the political parties are not the nominating bodies for the Seanad as this is for the vocational groups. We did not have any sense that it would be practical to apply the legislation. I know the political parties have a role but people have to be nominated by the vocational groups.

As one who goes through the university panel, where people do not get nominated by anyone or rather they get nominated by ten graduates of the university, I accept it is a very different system. Certainly, there would be no place for this in the university panel. My understanding was that, generally, there is no place for this on the vocational panels.

A further reason we did not consider this is that the IPU looks at the Lower House or the single House of Parliament, which was our focus. This was also, frankly, because the Seanad has a much better record. As we all know, 30% of our Members are now women and the Taoiseach’s nomination process effectively provides for a type of in-built voluntary target arrangement. We did not see this as being as imperative here.

In terms of the local elections, like Senator Keane, I would ask the Minister to reconsider this area. I totally accept the point about funding and the difficulty of providing for a relevant and pertinent sanction. It is not as clear-cut as with general elections. However, it is very important that we would ensure greater numbers of women come forward in the local elections. I was encouraged at the Dublin Castle conference on this issue in January that the general secretaries pointed out they would have to increase the numbers of women coming forward in the local elections in order to ensure they would reach the 30% quota for the general election. We may find this will happen in practice but I would certainly like to find whether there was some way we could extend the principle to the local elections.

In response to an earlier point, this is not top-down engineering of any kind. A great deal of evidence has been gathered over many years by many groups nationally, not all in Dublin, such as the 50-50 group recently formed in Sligo and 50-50 by 2020 campaigns all over Ireland. This is something women are pushing for. I have been lobbied on this by many women, as I know have others. It is not top-down. There has been a great groundswell to which the political parties and the Minister have responded. I pay him great credit for that.

 

Senator Ivana Bacik:     I will be brief as I am conscious of the time and also that others have been making Second Stage speeches, as Senator Aideen Hayden said. This is not the time to do so.

On the specific points raised, I am grateful to Senator Averil Power for referring to the sunset clause. I will reconsider the most recent evidence on whether it would be wise to include a sunset clause if there is a fear there has been be a falling back and that the culture has not been given enough time to change.

In response to Senator Paul Bradford, we have rehearsed this debate many times. Of course, legislation is not the only solution to the problem of increasing women’s participation and I am sure people are fed up hearing about the obstructions facing women, be they Independents or party members. Whatever about the five Cs, there are four Cs that affect all women in trying to enter politics - cash, culture, child care and confidence. The candidate selection procedures apply specifically to political parties; that is the specific obstacle being tackled. Political parties are not the obstacle. I have said they are the gatekeepers, although that is not my phrase 0- it is the phrase used in the international research. They are the gatekeepers who can open or close a gate to political participation by women. That is why they are targeted in the legislation.

On the Portmarnock Golf Club case, there is a question about how one sanctions a private organisation. The Bill, as we recommended, clearly has State funding for political parties as the sanction or incentive to ensure targets are met. That is the key point. It would be very difficult to do this in the case of other organisations. This is the difficulty in the case of Seanad elections. Our report recommended the extension of the principle to European elections because, of course, political parties nominate in the same way as they do for general elections. There is the same difficulty in the case of local elections in deciding on sanctions. It is a matter worth mentioning.

I am interested to hear Senator John Crown is in a female dominated world. I was not aware women were in the majority among consultants in the medical profession.

Senator John Crown:     They soon will be.

Senator Ivana Bacik:     I conducted research in 2003 and we published the first study in Ireland of gender discrimination in the legal profession. We found that while well over two thirds of all law students nationally were women who have been in the majority since the mid-1980s, they were a tiny minority at the top levels of the profession. I suspect the same is true of the medical profession. What this legislation is trying to do is tackle what we call the pipeline factor—–

Senator John Crown:     On a point of order, two of six consultant oncologists in St. Vincent’s Hospital are female. For many years neither of the two consultants was female. There will soon be a female majority.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach:     That is not a point of order.

Senator Ivana Bacik:     I am delighted to hear that. A key point about the legislation concerns the pipeline fallacy, the idea that it will happen if we let things to continue organically. It will not. That is why we need the legislation.

 

 

Electoral (Amendment) (Political Funding) Bill 2011: Report and Final Stages

Thursday, 15 March 2012

Senator Ivana Bacik:     In keeping with what Senator Mac Conghail said earlier, I am in favour of the spirit of the amendment but against it on a technical level. I do not have a difficulty with the proposal to start at 30%. That was recommended in the report that was produced by the Oireachtas joint committee in 2009. That recommendation was based on the Belgian model, which involves starting with a target of one third. Such a level would represent a doubling of the proportion of candidates who were women at the last election. If it were achieved, it would mark significant progress in itself.

Although I have no difficulty with keeping the 30% figure as a starting point, I would like to see change in another respect. Would it be possible to reduce the timeframe within which the target will remain at 30% before increasing it to 40%? If that cannot be done in this House, I ask the Minister if it could be done in the Dáil. The Bill as it stands specifies a starting point of 30% at the next general election, to increase to 40% seven years after the date of that election. I would like the period within which the 40% target must be reached to be reduced somewhat. If we were to provide for a five-year period, that would be more closely aligned to the election cycle. That would give us a realistic chance of progressing to the 40% level that all Senators on this side of the House agree with. While I do not have a difficulty with the proposal to start at 30%, I would like us to agree on a reduction in the time it will take us to get to the 40% target.