Busy week for Labour's women

Posted on November 12, 2008 at 03:25 PM

New women candidates
Claire O'Regan, Grainne Kilmurry and Eileen Drew who are all first time candidates running in the forthcoming Local Elections and who are taking part in Labour Women's mentoring programme.

A number of different things have been happening this week on a wide range of issues, including the launch of Labour's mentoring programme for the forthcoming Local Elections, a debate on the Social Welfare Bill and another debate on the disgraceful decision on the cervical cancer vaccination.

On Monday Deputy Joan Burton launched our Local Election Mentoring programme for women candidates.

Launching the programme she said: "The Labour Party, with one third of its PLP being women, has the highest proportion of all political parties but we are not resting on our laurels. As deputy leader, I am leading a drive that will hopefully see many more women elected to represent Labour at the 2009 local elections.

"The Labour Party is getting existing women TDs and councillors to mentor new women candidates in the hope that they can draw on this experience and get elected themselves in due course."

Meanwhile Deputy Roisin Shortall in her contribution to the Social Welfare Bill debated in the Dáil on Tuesday spoke of just how worse off people on social welfare are after the Budget.

"Labour is venomously opposed to this Bill on the basis that it contains several cuts which can only be described as savage.
"The most cynical aspect of the manner in which the Government has dealt with this budget and Social Welfare bill has been the campaign they engaged in for a number of weeks before the budget where they were actively spinning whatever happened in the budget they would protect the vulnerable, quite clearly that has now been shown to be a complete lie."

Roisin's full speech can be viewed at the following link to Google Video.

The issue of Minister Mary Harney's abrupt u-turn on vaccinating 12-year-old girls against cervical cancer has been gaining momentum all week with it being raised at different times in the Dáil.

You can watch our Health Spokesperson, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan's contribution to the debate about the vaccine where she called on the Minister not to abandon the vaccine on our You Tube channel.

Tagged with Health • Social & Family Affairs • Budget09