FF lack of female candidates a ‘big mistake’

FIANNA Fáil’s decision to opt for the old boys network in the European elections, by its failure to nominate any female candidates, was condemned as a big mistake yesterday.

The party is running eight candidates more than any other party including six new contenders. Yet FF is set to be the only political party not to run a woman, making it an entire decade since the party had a female MEP candidate.

The snubbing of women on FF's list of candidates follows the pattern of the Government failing to appoint women to senior positions, the Green Party said, on International Women's Day.

Also in recent months, the Irish delegation to the Council of Europe, including two FF TD's, was banned from voting in recent months due to the absence of a female representative.

All of FF's list of directors of elections at both national and regional level are also men.

Fine Gael, Labour, the Green Party and Sinn Féin are all running female candidates.

The PDs have not yet selected candidates, but Liz O'Donnell is still considering to be running in Dublin.

Launching her party's European women candidates, Green Party MEP Patricia McKenna said it was regrettable that FF had no female candidates and successive Governments had also failed to appoint a female European Commissioner.

"It is becoming an embarrassment that we cannot appoint one woman to senior positions in the European institutions bar Máire Geoghegan Quinn's appointment to the Court of Auditors," she said.

Stating that there was no lack of qualified women to be appointed to Europe, Ms McKenna said there were a number of capable FF Ministers, as well as FF Senator Mary White.

According to a FF spokesperson, no woman sought to contest the selection convention and there were no females nominated, but the party was mindful of the issue and is currently conducting an equality audit.

The last woman to run for FF in the European elections was Olive Braiden in Dublin in 1994, who came twelfth out of 15 candidates and got the lowest vote of the three FF candidates in the constituency.