The percentage of women selected/declared to contest the next general election. 16.4%

This follows several years and a number of reports on the issue. No screaming about quotas or the unfairness of them is going to fix this now. It is deeply depressing.

This is not representative of my country, of me, of my circle of friends and other reality.

We can have all the postmortems or premortems and I bet we will do. (NO panels of women talking about why they want to run please – let them win their seats on their campaigns and abilities but no political infighting amongst women, it’s horrendous.) The next Dáil looks like it will be even more male, pale and stale. Ablebodied, settled and Irish, and this is before a vote is cast.