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Three Government senators, including Seanad leader Regina Doherty, have called on former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger to resign or be removed from the commission examining the future of the Irish media.
Mr Rusbridger has been at the centre of controversy over his knowledge of media commentator Roy Greenslade’s sympathies for the IRA.
IRA abuse victim Mairia Cahill has called for Mr Rusbridger’s removal from the commission because he was editor of The Guardian when Mr Greenslade wrote an article in 2014 questioning the credibility of a BBC Spotlight programme about Ms Cahill’s abuse case.
The Government backed the former newspaper editor’s continued membership of the Future of Media Commission this week despite the controversy and Ms Cahill’s request.
In an International Women’s Day conversation with Women for Election this week, Taoiseach Micheál Martin gave a quite frank account of the opposition within his party towards quotas or directives towards selecting women. Where he was less honest was setting a highly aspirational target to achieve 50/50 representation of women and men in national politics by 2030. He won’t be around to make it happen anyway.
On their own, the quotas won’t achieve equality. The five barriers that hold women back in political careers, known as ‘the five C’s’, still remain:
-Cash: women earn less and money is needed to start out;
Mairia Cahill has criticised a BBC Northern Ireland presenter for her role in backing ex-Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger remaining on a media group set up by the Irish Government.
Minister for Communications Catherine Martin has said she is continuing to consult Cabinet colleagues over a call for the resignation of the former editor of the Guardian from the Stateâs Future of Media Commission.
The call has been made by MáirÃa Cahill who told a BBC Spotlight programme in 2014 that as a teenager she was raped by an IRA member and that the IRA had sought to cover up the assault.
She subsequently complained to the Guardian about a piece written by former Fleet Street editor Roy Greenslade, who recently publicly declared himself to be a supporter of the IRAâs campaign of violence.