The Women for Election and Offaly County Council ‘Supporting More Women and Diversity in Offaly Programme’
Women for Election is delighted to be partnering with Offaly County Council to deliver a programme to support more women in Offaly into local politics.
Offaly is the county with the lowest representation of women in Local Government with just one female County Councillor out of nineteen, or 5%. In the last local elections, only 2 women ran out of a total of 12 candidates in the locality of Tullamore, 2 out of 10 candidates in Edenderry were women, and just 4 out of 14 in Birr.
In total that’s 8 women out of a total of 36 candidates.
With this programme, we’re hoping to change all this by doubling the number of women running.
With the launch of the programme happening in the Tullamore Court Hotel tomorrow the 18th October at 7.00pm – 9.00pm the Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage Peter Burke has said
“Offaly has the lowest level of female participation in local government nationwide and action must be taken to address this. As Minister for Local Government, I am delighted to support both Women for Election and Offaly County Council in taking meaningful steps to tackle this issue.
We must work together to ensure more women contest the 2024 local elections, to make our council chambers more reflective of the society that they serve.”
The CEO of Women for Election Caitriona Gleeson has said
“The more women we have from a diversity of backgrounds at the table the greater the quality of decision making and the greater the decisions reflect the needs of our communities.”
Women for Election is a non-partisan non-governmental organisation
