Sarah Harte: Cabinet appointments compound the gender imbalance in Leinster House

Leinster House is a workplace with asymmetrical gender power arrangements, and it’s a terrible example

Surrounded by candles, with the gas camping stove out waiting for the storm, we exchanged a glance then looked back at the television, eyeing the rows of dark suits in the new government's Cabinet and muttering. Gender balance my foot. File picture: Maxwell’s

You can smell the stink of sexism, if not downright misogyny, wafting over the ocean from America, but maybe we have our homegrown version here.

Because, yeah, no, as Ross O’Carroll Kelly might say, last Thursday's appointment of the Cabinet was a giant disappointment. They really channelled Zuckerberg's “masculine energy” thing. I watched the RTÉ news with an even more sour boomer whose face would have curdled milk.