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Galway’s Spice Girls add colour – and clout
Bradley Bytes – A sort of political column by Dara Bradley
Galway sisters are doing it for themselves. Well, not quite. But we have counted a fair few members of the ‘fairer sex’ having declared for the local elections.
The current City Council has five women: Terry ‘Polltopper’ O’Flaherty (Ind), Nuala Nolan (Lab), Michelle Murphy (FG), Catherine Connolly (Ind) and Collette Connolly (Lab).
There are 10 men, of course, but that’s still means a third of representatives are women. Not reflective of the general populace in the city but far better than Dáil Éireann where women are more likely to be cleaners of our national parliament than members of it.
Just 15% of the country’s 166 TDs are women. Fianna Fáil has no female TDs, a major problem as it tries to rebuild from electoral oblivion.
All of the five women are going for re-election (Nuala and Michelle weren’t elected but co-opted to fill Derek Nolan and Hildergarde Naughton’s seats).
And they’ll be joined by five more female candidates, making it 10 females so far who have declared for the City Council race by our reckoning.
The others include: Nicola Deacy (FF), Anna Marley (SF), Margo Kelly (FG), Mairéad Farrell (SF) and Monica Coughlan (Lab).
There are three electoral wards but it is over in Galway City East where the battle for the female vote will be most hotly contest.
Sitting councillors, Polltopper and Nuala have competition from three other women, (Kelly, Coughlan and Farrell) as they vie for six seats.
In the City Central Ward, Collette faces competition from just two women, Marley and Deacy, in the pursuit of six seats.
Over in City West, sitting members Catherine Connolly and Murphy appear to have a free-run and are the only female candidates declared.
It’ll be interesting to see when the boxes are open if having more women in a ward, or less, is better in terms of electing women. For example, will the east ward, with five female candidates, split the women’s vote; or will the transfers of five women, properly proportioned, elect more women than the other two wards?
Of course, the real power lies with the executive. It is mostly men, headed by Brendan McGrath, the city manager. Although in fairness, Edel McCormack, a formidable female, holds the purse-strings as the Director of Services for Finance.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.