Community groups gather in Limerick to make sure women are at centre of local government planning

Published: Wednesday, November 25, 2015

The National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI) and the National Collective of Community Based Women’s Groups are today holding a meeting with community groups from across the Midwest to discuss how women’s needs can be made central to local government.

Eilís Ní Chaithnía, Membership Development Officer at NWCI said,
“This event today is a response to strong appetite among communities to feel they are involved in the decisions local government’s make on their behalf. It is a series of workshops being held across Ireland. This period of austerity has highlighted to people just how important local authorities can be in protecting the most vulnerable in their communities. They are ideally placed to ensure that women have the chance to prosper and engage meaningfully in their communities. Simply by taking women’s experiences into account during planning and budgeting, they can become instrumental in achieving a society where women and men are truly equal. The groups attending today are coming together to make sure this happens.”

Liz Price, Coordinator of the Limerick Women’s Network, a local branch of the National Collective of Community-based Women’s Networks, has been surprised by the numbers registering for this workshop or the lively discussion on local reform processes that took place.

“People are hungry for information on how they can make local government work for them”, Liz commented. “There is a clear willingness to be involved in participatory democratic processes and we are giving people the space to consider how to do so even more effectively.”

Eilís Ní Chaithnía of NWCI continued,
“We are delighted to have a representative Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission outline how local authorities can embed human rights and equality into their work. This event is hugely important because quite simply, if women aren’t involved in local government planning, they have no say on the decisions that affect their lives, and local communities are the poorer for it.”

Speakers included:
Eilís Ní Chaithnía, National Women’s Council of Ireland
Liz Price, National Collective of Community-based Women’s Networks, Limerick branch
Deirdre Toomey, Irish Human Rights Commission
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