West’s women show 2020 wasn’t all bad!

Bradley Bytes – a sort of political column with Dara Bradley

Woah, what a year! The likes of it we’ve never seen. Hopefully we won’t again, either.

It’s been a woeful year all round. Plague, recession and all-round depression, 2020 hadn’t much going for it. But on closer inspection, it has been good for the West’s women in politics.

In February’s General Election, Galway West voters broke new ground, electing more women than men for the first time ever.

Shinner Mairéad Farrell became the party’s first woman TD in Galway and first Sinn Féin TD here since 1922. And she’s not just a token woman to soften the party’s image; Mervue’s Mairéad has been thrust into the spotlight by being entrusted with a high-profile and important front-bench economic portfolio.

Not bad for a 30-year-old who 18-months previously couldn’t hold her City Council seat in City East. Now, with the Shinners riding high in the polls, unseating her will be tricky for any would-be challengers.

She joined Hildegarde Naughton (FG) and Catherine Connolly (Ind) who were re-elected to Dáil Éireann in Galway West.

Hildegarde was elevated to high office – she’s now a ‘super junior’ minister who attends Cabinet, or Minister of State at the Department of Climate Action and Transport, to give her full title.

Again, not bad for someone who first entered politics in 2009, and who has consistently defied the odds to fend off male party colleagues and to win surprise elections. Seán Kyne was the latest in a line of FG men, including heavyweights John Mulholland and Pearce Flannery, who have suffered her electoral success.

Perhaps the political story of the year, from the politician of the year – male or female – was Catherine Connolly’s coup in becoming Leas Ceann Comhairle.

Capitalising on cracks in the Coalition, Cat the Claddagh Queen coasted home in a secret vote that the three Government parties had the numbers to win comfortably.

Not only did she rock the establishment, but in doing so she broke the glass ceiling to become the first ever deputy speaker of the Dáil, and was elected by a majority of her peers. And again, she’s not just a token woman – Cat has proved to be adept in the chair and compares more than favourably to the Ceann Comhairle who she deputises for. Politics could do with more women – and men – with her moral fibre.

Other women politicians, who have carved out a small bit of history, or who have made 2020 a little bit more palatable, were, in no particular order: Pauline O’Reilly, Mary Hoade, Anne Rabbitte and Imelda Byrne.

Pauline missed out on a Dáil seat in February in her first general election but became the first Galway Greens’ woman to represent the party in the Oireachtas when she subsequently won a seat in the Seanad elections.

Anne Rabbitte, the first Fianna Fáil woman TD in Galway East, like Hildegarde, was promoted to a Minister of State, and holds the Disabilities portfolio.

Galway County Councillor Mary Hoade (FF) was elected head of the Association of Irish Local Government (AILG), the first woman president in the organisation’s 120-year history.

And Imelda Byrne, co-opted to the seat left vacant by Ollie Crowe’s election to the Seanad, took the male look off Fianna Fáil’s City Council grouping, and became the party’s first woman councillor at City Hall in over a decade.

Remember 2020 for Covid-19, but don’t forget the achievements of Mná na Gaillimhe – more power to them in 2021!
For more Bradley Bytes, see this week’s Galway City Tribune. You can buy a digital edition HERE.