Fine Gael MEP Maria Walsh was simply “desperate to get a bit of profile” when she criticised Fianna Fáil’s relative lack of female European election candidates, according to Tánaiste Micheál Martin.
The Fianna Fáil leader was speaking to reporters in Dublin today at the launch of his party’s local election manifesto.
In response to a question he said that of Fianna Fáil’s total 365 local election candidates nationwide, around 90 were women.
Earlier in the year, Fine Gael MEP Maria Walsh had hit out at Fianna Fáil’s European election ticket for being too “male, pale and stale”, claiming that the lineup lacked female candidates.
Fine Gael MEP Maria Walsh criticises 'male, pale and stale' politicshttps://t.co/UJqjLmpkqq
— Irish Daily Mirror (@IrishMirror) February 8, 2024
Asked if these remarks had been appropriate, Martin’s reply was sardonic.
“I noticed some European candidates at the time were desperate to get a bit of profile,” he said with a smile, adding: “But that happens in elections, so, you know…”
Asked by one journalist if Walsh was not in fact correct, since only around 25% or so of Fianna Fáil’s candidates for the upcoming local election were female, Martin denied that she was.
“No, not at all – we’ve made very good progress,” he said.
The journalist replied that a ticket of 25% women was “very few” female candidates, to which Martin replied “It’s not very few – not at all.”
The exchange came after a question about Fianna Fáil’s newly announced proposal to attempt to “enhance diversity in local government” and “mandate gender targets for board appointments in local authorities”.
In addition, the Irish government has a years-old policy of offering hundreds of thousands of euros to political parties to help them run more “women candidates” and “people of diversity” in local elections.
Over €230,000 in taxpayer money has been given to nine Irish political parties to help them run more “women candidates” and “people of diversity” in the upcoming local election, under a scheme which has been running since 2019.#gripthttps://t.co/Al0e7U2xdO
— gript (@griptmedia) December 14, 2023
While the Tánaiste directed specific questions about the precise working of this scheme to the Minister for Local Government Darragh O’Brien, he said that Fianna Fáil does not choose candidates based on their identity characteristics, but rather “the impact that a candidate could have on a given area.”
The Irish government currently gives funding to political parties that run "people of diversity" as candidates, while FF's 2024 local election manifesto calls for mandatory "gender targets" in local government boards.
Gript's @Ben_Scallan asks Micheál Martin about this. pic.twitter.com/tp8u2g8u5e
— gript (@griptmedia) May 16, 2024