According to today's Irish Examiner, the Government is planning a 40% local election candidate quota for women and members of ethnic minority communities. Of course, greater engagement with the new Irish is essential if the advent of an Irish far-right party is to be prevented in future decades, but reserving nominations in such a manner may only serve to create a backlash. The approach taken by British parties seems preferable, in proactively taking their own initiatives in becoming more diverse and representative of their own constituencies in candidate selection, rather than through reluctant compliance with legislation.
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Given that it covers migrants, ethnic minorities and women, ie considerably more than half of the population, it really shouldn't be a hard quota to meet. And they're not being forced to, they just miss out on taxpayer funding if they want to be a party for white men. -
True, but when the gender quotas were introduced for general elections, the larger parties tended to just tack on an extra candidate to meet the requirements after the main selections had been made, so the overall effect was mixed. One would hope that on this occasion, they would seek to attract new members into their branches, rather than, say, simply adding a "token Pole" to electoral tickets simply to make up the numbers. On the other hand, the Left-wing parties, such as Labour, Greens and the Soc Dems seem to be engaged on such matters already.Comment
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