Prime Minister targets key posts for women

In June 2000, the Irish Prime Minister announced a target of ensuring that a third of positions in one of the country's top civil service grades, that of assistant principal, will be filled by women applicants within the next five years.

The Prime Minister (Taoiseach), Bertie Ahern, has earmarked one-third of one of the top civil service grades - the post of assistant principal (AP) - for women over the next five years. Mr Ahern made the announcement at a conference held by the Institute of Public Administration (IPA) on 1 June 2000.

Mr Ahern was addressing a new report on gender equality in the civil service released by the IPA at the conference ("Gender equality in the civil service", Peter C Humphreys, Eileen Drew and Candy Murphy, IPA, Dublin, 2000). He said that the main findings in the report told a "gloomy story" with one particularly disturbing finding being the lack of progress made by women at AP level. The AP grade is a key one as it links middle civil service grades to the higher echelons of the civil service. However the number of women at this level rose by only one percentage point, from 23% to 24%, between 1987 and 1997. Mr Ahern described the AP grade as not only important in terms of managing the service, but as "a key pool from which the senior managers of the future are drawn".

In the same 10-year period (1987-97), the proportion of female principal officers increased from 5% to 12% of the total. Mr Ahern said that, bearing in mind that 64% of all civil servants are female, the new one-third target for APs should be regarded as merely a first step on a "long journey". "The government believes that the present position in relation to gender balance in the senior civil service is unacceptable and the movement towards a greater balance must be accelerated as part of an integrated approach to gender equality," Mr Ahern concluded.