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.
