As the focus on the role played by advocacy NGOs in the formation of public policy sharpens in the wake of the recent referendum campaign, new information has revealed the extent of the access which one of the key organisations in that campaign has to Government Ministers and Departments.
Gript can also reveal that the National Women’s Council of Ireland directly lobbied for the establishment of the Oireachtas Committee that discussed the recommendations of the Citizens Assembly and which led to the decision to hold the recently resoundingly defeated referenda to change the Constitution.
A response from Minister Roderic O’Gorman to a PQ from Rural Independent TD for Laois/Offaly, Carol Nolan, has revealed that officials from the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY) met with members of the National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI) on a total of 41 occasions between January 1, 2019 and the date of reply (20/03/2024).
There are no specific details provided regarding what was discussed, or what the outcome of such engagements between Minister O’Gorman and his officials was.
However, an indication of what some of these issues might have been is provided in the substantial number of emails and letters which were also sent to Minister O’Gorman’s Department during roughly the same period.
These are recorded in the register of lobbying maintained by the Standards in Public Office Commission (SIPO.) Among those lobbies was an unsuccessful attempt “to secure representation” for the NWCI on the Pensions Commission to ensure that “gender issues” were included as part of their remit. This lobby took place prior to the appointment of the Commission in November 2020.
An apparently more fruitful engagement was the letter sent to then Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar, and Minister O’Gorman in the period between May and August requesting that a Committee of the Oireachtas be established “to act on the recommendations of the citizens assembly on gender equality.”
Such a Committee was indeed established in December 2021, and sat until December 2022. It was chaired by Labour Party leader Ivana Bacik and published a report which not only recommended that Article 40.1 and Article 41 be amended, but which also suggested a specific wording for the proposed changes which the Committee said should be put to referendum in 2023.
Hats off to the NWCI on that one certainly. They succeeded in persuading the leaders of the Government to agree to do as they had asked, and the Committee membership – which apart from Bacik included Lisa Chambers of Fianna Fáil, Fintan Warfield of Sinn Féin, Bríd Smith of People Before Profit, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill of Fine Gael, Independent Senator Alice-Mary Higgins and Neasa Hourigan of the Green, was happily replete with persons fully behind the NWCI’s objective.
The end proposal was, of course, unhappily for the NWCI, ultimately rejected by the actual citizens, rather than a random selection of said citizens, two weeks ago in a landslide NoNo.
Responses from other Departments to Deputy Nolan’s question regarding their engagements with the NWCI elicited some other interesting responses. The NWCI for example met with Minister for State in the Department of Agriculture, Pippa Hackett, to discuss the draft strategic plan for 2023 – 2027 for the Common Agricultural Policy. Your guess is as good as mine on that.
The special place which this group – pretty unrepresentative by any accepted measure one would have to say – has in the heart of state administration is indicated in other ways. Minister for the Environment Eamonn Ryan informed Deputy Nolan that his Department funds the NWCI under the Climate Action Plan.
Not only that but “In both March 2023 and 2024, as part of International Women’s Day events in my Department, all staff were invited to presentations by the organisation relating to the project.” One is almost afraid to ask exactly why the NWCI might be getting money related to the Climate, and secondly, what expertise they have or indeed position they occupy to be making presentations on the Climate to Departmental staff presumably during their working day?
We could go on quite at length, and bear in mind that Deputy Nolan still has to receive details regarding most of the other Departments who are still compiling their responses.
Among the other information currently supplied is that the Department of Rural and Community Development provided funding to the NWCI to host their 2022 annual conference in Monaghan.
Why you may ask. Does the Department fund any other groups to host their annual conferences? Beekeepers, tractor sellers, the manufacturers of hurling sticks would surely have an equally valid claim as a D4 type set-up if the criteria seemingly were that the event took place “down the bog” and that it coincided with some international Rural Day.
Fair enough it was international rural women’s day, and I am not aware if there is an equivalent day to celebrate beekeepers or lads who make Massey Fergusons. My bad.
All Hail the National Women’s Council I say. They have more spoons in more pies than Mister Kipling.
Loading ...
The NWCI is a veritable case study on institutional capture. TENI’s grubby little hands are all over this… And he thought he could use the Dentons’ approach for these referendums too. TENI fooled the people of Ireland once, they won’t do it again.
Hear hear
The incompetent Regime use the 6Billion $ Taxpayer funded NGO’s to promote their subversive agenda and call it democracy.
The NGO’s in turn have had a hot line to RTE ,and the Print Media to promote their propaganda and dangerous policies detrimental to the interests of the People of Ireland,
Unfortunatlly for the Regime and the NGO’s the prImrose path to RTE got rocky , and suffered a cataclysmic collapse, reflected in the Tubridy affair.
RTE lost all credibility and people woke to the realisation they had been manipulated and bamboozled by lies,omissions and suppressions of truth for many years.
The stupifying dope pills no longer worked and was shown in the recent result in the Referendum when the People finally awoke from their decade long Rip van Winkle somnolence and kicked the door in on this traitorous Regime and its vile lapdogs.
The Goon show goes on and the Fat Lady has yet to sing and bring the curtain down on the Clown Show.
NWCI like every other woke NGO are unelected, without a mandate, yet are given full access to government. Paid for by the Irish tax payer. You couldn’t write it. How is that democratic? Why would Minister O’Gorman facilitate such access? Why would he support the erasure of woman and mother from the Irish Constitution? Why would a green minister of the environment fund NWCI? Is this the TENI play book from 2015 and the self ID bill? Using NWCI as cover? Our democracy has been hijacked by a cabal of woke ideologues. Defund the NGO sector and vote these parties out of office the first chance we get.
Vote them out but don’t vote SF in as they will be even worse.
Btw Matt your investigative journalism is vitally important. Keep up the good work. The survival of our democracy depends on it. And that’s hyperbole.
One demand we should make of all those who are seeking election is that they initiate an intensive examination of the activities and finances of all NGOS. Matt Treacy would be the ideal person for that task.
Unfortunately the employees of the Irish Times are far to busy as censors and political activists to do any actual journalism.
I used to wonder how the I.T. kept John Waters as an employee for so long. Now I wonder how in god’s name Mr. Waters managed to put up with the woke censorious gombeens they call Journalist in the Irish Times for so long. There should be a medal for such fortitude.
Looks like they were knocking on the hse’s door as well with gender madness. https://www.lobbying.ie/return/105884/national-womens-council-of-ireland
Citizens Assembly is a misnomer.
It is not an assembly proportionally representing a cross section of Ireland but one of representatives of certain select minority interests while excluding the majority who do not share the same interests, views and values.
Also known as the elite.
Looks like they are trying to interfere in our electoral reform too, bit odd for a so called womens council to be doing that.. https://www.lobbying.ie/return/88496/national-womens-council-of-ireland
No reply from the Department of Justice. Orla O’Connor has more power and influence in the Department of Justice than that lightweight Minister Helen McEntee.
De Wimmin’s council remind me of the story of the Children Of Lir……where the evil step mother casts her nasty spell ….. and the four deputies of the Rural Indep. Alliance (CNolan as Fionnula with Mattie, MCollins and RODonoghue as her brothers) who battle against the enchantments of the hateful Wimmin’s Council
The NWCI and all NGO’s should be defunded immediately. They are profoundly undemocratic. Nobody votes for them and they are not accountable to anybody. The NWCI claim to represent the women of Ireland. This is not the case. They have their agenda which is anti-woman, anti- life, anti-family, anti- humanity and anti- Christian. Against all the things that might possibly save us……think about that. There is hope though because the Truth will always win.
The NWCI does not represent the women of Ireland .It has a Transgender male on its Board of Directors.
The NWCI is akin to a Tapeworm /parasite on the Nation of Ireland ,that we support with our Taxes.
Its agenda is to promote Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, RSI Indoctrination in the school curriculum. LGBT, Mass Migration, Diversity, Equality,inclusion. and all the Marxist ‘Woke ‘ program designed to undermine and destroy the Family structure, culture ,religion,and traditions of a Nation and ultimately to displace its native People
This is a long festering war strategy to conquer, displace and loot a Nation for the benefit of Globalist profits.
The NWCI is the parasitic tool of the destructive Regime and has the support of its controlled puppets in RTE and Media to promote agendas damaging to the People and Nation.
They must all be swept away if Ireland is to survive.
The Regime is at war with the People, and many are now waking to the reality of the onslaught to destroy us.
The junta supported by the bought media and the various shades of left wing opinion that form the elite are indeed at war with the people. The elites problem now is that a great awakening has taken place among the people. They now know who and what their enemy is and are taking peaceful and methodical steps to eliminate the threat. Fine Gale see what’s coming and are jumping ship. F.F. true to form think they can brazen it out. There is going to be some almighty arse kicking come the rapidly approaching elections.