Shortly after nominations closed for General Election candidates last Saturday, an email dropped into the inboxes of news outlets across the country.
“Women for Election (WfE) confirms that the upcoming General Election will see 248 women running,” stated the press release.
“This is the largest ever number of women contesting for seats and is a phenomenal 53% increase on the number of women who ran in the 2020 General Election.”
Across the country, there are 680 candidates, meaning that 36% of the candidates are women. That compares to 31% five years ago when there were 162 female candidates.
That increase is evident locally in the Laois constituency where there is a record six women set to be on the ballot paper, exactly half.
This is only the second time that Laois will be a constituency in its own right having been separated out from our long-term partners Offaly.
By our reckoning, not only has there never been a female TD in Laois, there has only ever even been four Laois-based female General Election candidates in the entire history of the state.
When Cathy Honan from Portarlington ran for the Progressive Democrats (PDs) in 1987, it was the first time that people in Laois could vote for a woman. Offaly woman Constance Hanniffy did run for Fine Gael in 1977.
Honan polled well in her four General Election outings but was never successful.
She was, however, the second woman to be elected to Laois County Council in 1991 (Fianna Fáil’s Mary Wheatley was the first in 1985 while Theresa Mulhare, also of Fianna Fáil, also won a seat in 1991). Honan also served a term as a Senator.
Olwyn Enright made history in 2002 when she won a seat for Fine Gael, following in the footsteps of her father Tom, who had been first elected in 1969.
But after Cathy Honan’s last shot at the Dáil in 1997 (when she was the only woman candidate in a field of 12), the Laois candidates were exclusively male in every election until 2016, almost 20 years later.
On that occasion there were only six candidates in total. Two of them – Fine Gael’s Thomasina Connell and Sinead Moore for the Green Party – were women. Neither were elected.
By 2020, Laois and Offaly were back together, probably for the last time.
Incidentally Offaly had elected two women in 2016 when they were their own three-seat constituency. Carol Nolan made a breakthrough for Sinn Féin while Marcella Corcoran-Kennedy held the seat that she had won in 2011 following Olwyn Enright’s departure.
With the two counties coming back together in 2020 as one constituency with only five seats, it was Corcoran-Kennedy that lost out. In that election there were 15 candidates overall – but just four women.
And of those four, only one was from Laois – Pauline Flanagan, then running for Fianna Fáil.
Flanagan is now an Independent candidate but on this occasion there are five other Laois women running.
The Portlaoise-based Maria McCormack has replaced Brian Stanley as the Sinn Féin candidate, Mary Hand from Graiguecullen is the first ever Aontú General Election candidate in Laois while Rosie Palmer from Abbeyleix is running for the Greens.
The other three are all Independent – Flanagan, Cllr Aisling Moran from Killeen and Elaine Mullally from Portarlington.
Most of them have drawn attention to the fact that there has never been a female TD from Laois.
“Together … we can make history by getting Maria McCormack elected as the first ever female Laois TD,” said Sinn Féin’s local Director of Elections Aaron Kelly at their launch.
“We are on the cusp of making history – electing the first Independent woman to the Dáil for Laois,” said Aisling Moran at her launch.
“When the constituency was Laois-Offaly all our female TDs were Offaly based,” said Elaine Mullally. “We’ve actually never had a woman from Laois in Dail Eireann.”
Through quirk or tradition, lack of candidates or opportunity, Laois is different in that sense from the neighbouring counties.
Offaly have sent Olwyn Enright, Marcella Corcoran-Kennedy and Carol Nolan to the Dáil. Patricia Ryan (Sinn Fein) and Fiona O’Loughlin (Fine Gael) have been elected in Kildare South in recent elections. Jennifer Murnane-O’Connor was elected for Fianna Fáil in Carlow, Kathleen Funchion for Sinn Féin in Kilkenny.
The gender quota now means that 40% of a party’s candidates must be female. Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour have all just scraped over the line with 41%. Sinn Féin have 42%. On the other end of the scale, Aontú have 53% and the Greens have 51%.
Conversely, of all the Independent candidates running across the country (excluding Independent Ireland) 81% are male.
In Laois, there has never been female participation at such a level.
All of them are hoping to be the one that makes history.
SEE ALSO – Check out all our 2024 General Election coverage here
