A recent letter to the Irish Examiner caught my eye. The writer told us that, “While women constitute half of our population, they are seriously under-represented in national politics. Out of the 4,452 Dáil seats between 1918 and 2009, only 219 were filled by women (4.9%). At present, only 26 TDs out of 166 are women (16%).”

The letter writer then goes on to offer the opinion that, “A healthy gender balance calms things down. Men bring passion. Women bring reason.”  Whoa on there Daithi from Dublin! Shouldn’t that be the other way around? In fact maybe both sexes bring both abilities, who’s to say.

But the Government, and indeed all of the parties, are kicking this idea around at the moment and I just don’t get it. There are more women in childcare for example and more teachers are women today as well. Human resource departments everywhere are almost all female. Should we be demanding gender balances in these areas also? Women are under-represented as ‘brickies’ on building sites or garage mechanics for that matter. Anyone got an appetite to address that imbalance, (Daithi?).

If I could select all of the candidates that put themselves before us for election, sex is the last thing I would even consider. Who gives a rattling damn whether they are men or women for God’s sake. We need leaders with ability, empathy, integrity, honesty  and human kindness and none of the 166 gobshites currently taking up space in the Dail would appear to have any of the above attributes.

As with everything else I have ever learned about women, they will go into politics if they want to and even if they do want to and they give it a try, they might change their minds too and we have to be ready for that, like it or not. But if 166 women presented themselves with the attributes I have listed above, I’d vote for every one of them tomorrow.

But reserving seats for their style of arse based on some half-baked notion they have a right to be there is ignorant nonsense. We’re in enough trouble as it is Daithi from Dublin!