Next Wednesday the lavishly state funded NGO, the National Women’s Council (NWC) will be holding a webinar where TASC, the uber-left wing Think-tank for Action on Social Change, will share the findings of a gender analysis of Budget 2022 which they carried out for the NWC.
According to the NWC, the webinar will also highlight the gaps in data for “intersectional gender analysis.”
This, Oireachtas members are being told, will inform future debates about how civil society can “hold government to account.”
Quite.
The NWC also say that it is doing this because it is “concerned by the continuing lack of attention to seeking gender and broader equality outcomes” in the national budgetary process.
This last claim that there has been a lack of attention in the national budgetary process, is absolute and unadulterated nonsense, as anyone with even 30 seconds to spare can easily verify.
Here, for example is a list of 12 high-level actions that this government and indeed, the previous government have taken to provide the very kinds of ‘attention’ that the NWC absurdly claim to be lacking.
And by the way; all of what follows was pointed out by Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Michael McGrath to no less a ‘gender equality champion’ than Holly Cairns, the Social Democrat TD back in March.
Why is it important to note all of this?
It is important because the claims being made by the NWC are so transparently and brazenly misleading.
Indeed, might a reasonable person go further and conclude that making such claims constitutes the distribution of ‘disinformation’ by an NGO that has been in receipt of millions of euros in state funding over the last decade and more?
Of course, at a more fundamental level, this latest charade of faux outrage by the NWC also speaks to a sense that very many people have when it comes to NGOs in general, which is that no matter how far government’s go, no matter much they accede to their demands, ultimately nothing can ever satisfy them.
To justify their existence, the sense of victimhood and crisis must be perpetuated. Successes and gains must be ignored and distorted. Deficits must be amplified.
The appalling thing is that we have become used to such easily discreditable claims being made by obscenely well-funded NGO’s.
But don’t’ worry. I am sure that come next Wednesday, the media will forensically analyse these claims and challenge the NWC to back up their guff with facts. Right?