‘It’s not just about women’s issues’

WHEN the first local elections took place in Ireland in 1899, one newspaper ran a front page story reporting “loud laughter” at the announcement that the ballot would give women the right to vote for the first time in this country.

More than 110 years on, making up just a fifth of local representatives, there are female councillors who will tell you that some things never change.

While females have always been allowed to vote in local elections here, the councils remains almost as male dominated today as they did when the provision for women in the 1898 Local Government Act “raised hilarity and heckles”.