Women of substance should be priority for candidate selection

FINE GAEL and Fianna Fáil are in significant trouble, up against a public whose electoral choices are informed by, among other things, dejection at the failure of the coalition partners to tackle the housing crisis.

The two Government parties should be riding high on the back of the pandemic. There have been problems, yes, and many will warrant future investigation, but with over half the population now fully vaccinated, you might have expected a poll bounce.

Instead, as the Delta variant takes hold in the community and case numbers rise, albeit without significant impact yet on the health service, the vaccine dividend has been proven temporary. As polling by Ireland Thinks for the Irish Mail On Sunday has consistently shown, housing is the No.1 issue for most voters.

Sinn Féin targeted housing and managed to maintain its general election showing in the Dublin Bay South by-election; on the strength of that performance, it would keep its seat in a multiseat contest. For others wishing to protest the inaction of the Government on this occasion, they found a more palatable choice in Ivana Bacik. They sent no less emphatic a signal that change must come and it must come soon to alleviate the twin crises of a lack of affordable housing, and astronomical rents both in Dublin and all over the country.

Ms Bacik is a strong, wellknown candidate who was also able to capitalise on a sense of injustice felt by fans of Kate

O’Connell. Indeed, the result might well have been very different had Fine Gael stuck by Ms O’Connell, despite her differences with the party leadership. Instead, it opted for James Geoghegan, who had little to show in his track record compared with Ms Bacik’s decades of advocacy and legislative initiatives.

This highlights another issue the main parties must come to grips with, which is to identify female candidates of substance – there are many of them willing, and more than able, to serve. The electorate has shown, time and again, that it will vote for women with the necessary credentials.

At the next election, there is an imperative that 40% of candidates must be women. Potential winners must be identified, not just token candidates that tick a single box, because the most important box of all will not be ticked for them in return.

WE CAN’T AFFORD TO DITHER ON JABS

LAST week, we were promised vaccines from Romania. It has now emerged the deal has not yet been finalised. This week we report that the Government missed a chance to secure 800,000 Moderna vaccines in November, leaving the field open for Denmark to buy them.

As a nation, we are scrambling to secure extra vaccines from other countries, including Denmark. This paper has never tried to criticise a coalition that is doing its best in unprecedented circumstances – as we so often hear, it is better to get it done quickly than to get it done right.

However, it was not beyond the bounds of normal foresight to decide to buy as many vaccines as possible when the opportunity arose.

Questions can now be rightly asked whether hundreds of thousands of younger people who could have been vaccinated have been let down by a failure to fully grasp the importance of securing supplies.