Author Archives: Anna Kingston

Great crowd at 5050-group’s meeting in Cork

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It was great to see such a large crowd at the 5050-group’s first public meeting in Cork last night. It was even greater to listen to the vast majority’s endorsement of introducing measures to increase the gender parity in Irish politics. Both male and female politicians stressed the importance of having more women in the Dáil and that the proposed legislation to cut party funding if there is less than a 30-70 balance is a step on the way. But the aim should still be 5050 by 2020!

You can’t argue against quotas!

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A few of the 5050-group members attended the Irish Mace Final in UCC last Friday night. The motion was entitled “That this house would introduce gender quotas of 50% in Dáil Eireann” and four teams participated (UCC, UCD and two from TCD). The eight well-dressed and polished team-members delivered powerful speeches on the topic, but it was a pity that the acoustics in the Honan chapel muffled quite a lot of what was being said. The exception was when the only female out of the eight students took the stand and spoke in favour of the motion – her performance was excellent and she was rightly crowned champion together with her male team-mate! I know that I’m biased but the arguments against introducing quotas were just flat and unconvincing – no offense to the teams who made the effort to oppose the motion!