Disappointment as female representation falls in Cork following local elections

Following the local elections, women make up just 16% of councillors in Cork city, with a decrease in female representation in both the city and county.

In Cork city, where 27 women ran, just five of 31 council seats were filled by women, with no constituency electing more than one woman.

New candidates elected were Labour’s Laura Harmon in the South West ward, Sinn Féin’s Michelle Gould in the North West, and Fianna Fáil’s Margaret McDonnell in the North East. Sinn Féin’s Fiona Kerins in Cork City South Central and Mary Rose Desmond in Cork City South East retained their seats.

Four sitting female councillors lost theirs, leading to an overall decrease in the percentage of female councillors. Fine Gael’s Deirdre Forde and Rabharta’s Lorna Bogue lost their seats in the South East ward, and Sinn Féin’s Orla O’Leary and the Green Party’s Colette Finn lost theirs in the South West ward. Ms Finn told The Echo: “Women get more heavily criticised, they’re the first to lose their seats when the tide goes out for a party. The gender imbalance in our politics is very problematic.”

The Green Party and Sinn Féin both ran a high proportion of women, but Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil ran 29% and 25%, respectively.

Encouraging

Ms Gould told The Echo that Sinn Féin was “very encouraging about putting women forward — 50% of our candidates were women and they kept saying that more than 51% of the population are female”.

“So it’s only right that we’d have the same representation in our party,” she said.

Cork County Council has 29% women now, with 13 of the 15 existing women councillors re-elected and three new women candidates being elected from 41 candidates.

Fine Gael’s Kay Dawson and Independent Karen Coakley lost their seats, while the three seats vacated by councillors Danielle Twomey, Susan McCarthy in Midleton, and Marcia D’Alton in Carrigaline were all won by men — meaning an overall decrease from 18 to 16 women on the council.

Sheila O’Callaghan, who topped the poll in Cobh, told The Echo that a lot of her transfers went to other women — with Fine Gael councillor Sinead Sheppard getting the most votes from the distribution of her surplus, ahead of Ms O’Callaghan’s running mate and party colleague Dominic Finn.

Nationally, women will fill approximately the same percentage of seats as in the outgoing councils, and Ireland will remain in 22nd place in the EU for the number of women in local politics.

Gender quota

Both the National Women’s Council and Women for Election have called on all political parties in Ireland to commit to the introduction of a 40% gender quota for local election candidates.

Katie Deegan of Women for Election said: “The decrease in women’s representation on the Cork city and county councils is disappointing — at this rate, it could take many more decades to reach even 40% women on the councils.

“More women at decision-making tables makes politics work better for everyone.

“The reductions in the number of women on Cork city and county councils serve as a stark reminder of the barriers that still exist for women to be elected to political office.”

Rachel Coyle, NWC’s head of campaigns and mobilisation, said: “While a record number of 677 women contested the elections, up from 566 in 2019, they only made up 31% of all of the candidates.

“We know that when women are on the ticket, people vote for women — but Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael didn’t even manage to reach 30% of women candidates, which is incredibly disappointing.”