Senator Higgins welcomes the launch of the Report on Gender Budgeting from the Committee on Budgetary Oversight. The report contains several important recommendations including that the annual budget statement should be accompanied by an equality budget statement - something which Senator Higgins has long called for.
The report also stressed the importance of collecting gender disaggregated data. There is currently a significant lack of usable data which is impeding the implementation of the gender budgeting processes.
Gender budgeting is not a new concept. Many countries, including Austria and Scotland, have successfully implemented strong gender budgeting mechanisms which have yielded positive results for gender equality.
Last year, Senator Higgins hosted Christina McKelvie, a member of the Scottish Parliament and Convenor of its Equalities and Human Rights Committee and Emma Ritch from Engender Scotland in Leinster House to meet with members of the women's caucus and members of the Budgetary Oversight Committee to discuss the programmes which they had implemented in Scotland.
Senator Higgins will continue to push for further progress in the implementation of gender and equality budgeting and, in particular, will be calling, once again, for a gender and equality statement to accompany Budget 2019.
On July 13th in Seanad Eireann Senator Alice-Mary Higgins spoke in support of the Second Stage of our Seanad Reform Bill 2016 calling for implementation of the Manning Report and a more democratic and open Seanad.
Today, Senator Alice-Mary Higgins and Deputy James Lawless renewed their call for the swift passage of legislation to regulate online political advertising. While welcoming Facebook's decision to stop overseas advertisement on the referendum and Google’s announcement to pause all referendum advertising until after May 25th they believe legislation is urgently needed to ensure proper transparency and regulation of online political advertising.