Only nine women serving as mayors

Just nine women have been elected to serve as cathaoirleach - either chairperson, mayor, or lord mayor - across Ireland’s 31 local authorities, in elections held by county and city councils last month.

Councils in Cavan, Galway City, Laois, Leitrim, Louth, Meath, Tipperary, Wexford, and Wicklow have all elected women to serve as their first citizen.

Cathaoirligh are elected every 12 months and represent the public authority at public events. They also preside over meetings, work closely with the council executive, and have a casting vote in council votes.

Alongside this, only eight women have been elected to serve as leas cathaoirleach, or deputy mayor, down from ten last year.

There are only three councils where women hold both positions, Galway City, Wexford, and Wicklow. Meanwhile, 17 councils around the country - 55% - have an all-male leadership, including Cork city and county councils.

Cork City Council elected Fine Gael’s Damian Boylan and Gerry O’Brien as lord mayor and deputy lord mayor respectively, while in Cork County Council, Fianna Fáil’s Bernard Moynihan took the top job, with Independent Finbarr Harrington coming in as leas-cathaoirleach.

In Northern Ireland by contrast, women occupy six of the eight mayoral positions on offer, with five women serving as deputy mayors.

See Her Elected, a programme under Longford Women’s Link which supports women in rural Ireland to become candidates in local elections, said equality in leadership is necessary for a healthy democracy.

Programme Manager Dr Michelle Maher said more should be done by political parties to select women as candidates.

“The small number of women elected as council chairs is not simply the result of this year’s internal votes,” she said. “It reflects candidate selection and support decisions made before the 2024 local elections, when fewer than 30% of candidates fielded by the two largest local government parties … were women.

Of the 31 cathaoirleach positions available, 25 are held by either Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael. They also hold 24 out of the 31 leas cathaoirleach roles. Just 13 of either position are held by women in those parties.

“A limited pipeline of women councillors inevitably reduces the pool from which parties can nominate for leadership positions,” she said.

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael need to begin work for the next round of local elections in 2029 to recruit more women into local branches, support them as local area representatives, and ensure they receive the encouragement, mentoring, and backing needed to succeed at selection conventions, said Maher.

“If parties invest in building that pipeline over the next three years, next year’s announcement of council chairs could look very different,” she said.

This article was produced with the support of the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme funded by Coimisiún na Meán.