Kate’s tipped for comeback to a Seanad full of Craggy Island lads
(but she’s no Mrs Doyle)
KATE O’CONNELL and other female Fine Gael black sheep such as Michelle Mulherin are poised to become beneficiaries of the historic debacle in which the party failed to get a single female senator elected.
In the aftermath, Leo Varadkar who and Micheál Martin have been told by the National Women’s Council of Ireland to get their Seanad gender quotas in order by using their 11 taoiseach’s nominations to the upper house to exclusively appoint women. The nominees will only be appointed once a new taoiseach is in place.
Mr Varadkar has confirmed that the nominees will be an all-female team.
But internal Fine Gael figures have said the team will have to be convincing. ‘Leo has to bury the hatchet with Kate and Michelle Mulherin too,’ one source said.
‘There is a sense that Leo is uneasy with outspoken independent women. He is going to have to bite the bullet on this though.
‘Kate is a pharmacist and an advocate, and we are experiencing a health crisis. It will look odd if she is left out. Worse still, it will look petty.’
Fianna Fáil has also been left deeply embarrassed by the lack of women in its Seanad team.
After the initial success of Lisa Chambers in the Cultural panel, it took until the fourth panel for Catherine Ardagh to scrape in.
Ultimately though, Fine Gael has been the big gender loser via its failure to elect a single woman to any of the five panels, with outgoing senator Catherine Noone representing the highest-profile loss.
The results have created the scenario where no Fine Gael senators and fewer than 20% of Fianna Fáil senators are female.
This is more surprising given that Seanad races are closely controlled by the party managers.
One source said: ‘HQ controls who gets in and where. The commitment to gender equality just isn’t there or among councillors.’
By contrast Labour at 80% (4/5) the Greens (2/2 – 100%) and Sinn Féin (2/4 - 50%) all managed to elect a substantial percentage of female Seanad candidates.
One senior female Fianna Fáil source said: ‘It is a major disappointment that the Seanad is such a cold house for women. It is the political equivalent of the parochial house in Father Ted – a Craggy Island-style last refuge for the lads.’
Orla O’Connor, from the National Women’s Council of Ireland, said: ‘The taoiseach’s nominations should be entirely female to create some sort of gender balance’.
Ms O’Connor also called on a new taoiseach to appoint ‘as a matter of diversity, Eileen Flynn. I would think that to be very important’.
Ms Flynn narrowly missed out on being the first female Traveller to be elected to the Seanad. Ms O’Connor also noted of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael that the performance was ‘indicative of very serious structural problems. They are problems which other parties do not have.’
It is believed that a beneficiary of the dearth of female Fine
Gael senators will be the outgoing Social Protection Minister Regina Doherty.
In the wake of losing her seat in the fiercely competitive Meath East constituency, Ms Doherty appeared to signal her intent to bow out of politics via her decision not to seek a Seanad seat.
However, her performance during the coronavirus crisis has sparked speculation on a continuing role in national politics. She even secured a personal tribute in the Seanad from flinty independent senator Victor Boyhan who said
that, despite Ms Doherty no longer being a deputy: ‘I see a woman on television every day standing up courageously at the frontline doing her work for the State. I might put a bit of a plug in; there will be taoiseach’s nominees to the Seanad, and she should be given due consideration for the work she has done for our country.’
One senior source said: ‘No doubt she will be a taoiseach’s pick if she wants the gig and there may even be a job as Leader of the House’.
Mr Varadkar’s need to buttress his feminist credentials means there may be a way back in for Fine Gael’s other black sheep Ms Mulherin but no space is expected for Catherine Noone who torpedoed her Dáil election chances when she called the Taoiseach ‘autistic’.
A senior party source said: ‘Even when it comes to the greater good of gender equality, there are limits.’
‘Leo has to bury the hatchet with Kate’
‘Doherty should be given consideration’