Maire GEOGHEGAN-QUINN: Research and Innovation Commissioner

evercloserunion

The current commission are going to see Europe through its recovery. It means that in 2014 FF will be able to say they helped pull Europe out of the worst economic crisis in decades.

kangaroo

taconnol wrote: »

I know you have an axe to grind about gender quotas in politics, kangaroo..

You say you disagree with them also.

taconnol wrote: »

But my opinion remains the same that MGQ's gender really had nothing to do with it.

Yes, Barroso did mention it. And yes Cowen did mention it. But from what I know of Cowen, he was just happy to have a chance to pay lip-service to Barroso . Cowen would have gone for the FFer no matter the gender.

I don't know whether it was "lip-service" or not; MGQ is not the only possible person who could do the job.

Also I'm not sure if I'd use the phrase "lip-service" to describe something one disagrees with e.g. if somebody said, there needs more "white" people on a panel, would one say it was "lip service" if our Taoiseach echoed those words when dealing with the media and said X partly got the job because they were white (or whatever). This is relevant even if her gender wasn't a factor in this particular case for Cowen, to repeat my point (as you repeated yours), I do think it is significant when people in positions of authority (how much higher can one go?) give these reasons. If people don't raise the issue, it could become the norm to use gender as a means of selecting people for posts.

Macha

kangaroo wrote: »

You say you disagree with them also.

Yes I do. But I'm not going to talk the issue to death.

kangaroo wrote: »

I don't know whether it was "lip-service" or not; MGQ is not the only possible person who could do the job.

Politics is more complicated that who "could" do the job.

kangaroo wrote: »

I do think it is significant when people in positions of authority (how much higher can one go?) give these reasons. If people don't raise the issue, it could become the norm to use gender as a means of selecting people for posts.

Again, you have yet to prove that in this case gender was used as a means of selecting the person for the post. That's my whole point.

kangaroo

taconnol wrote: »

kangaroo wrote:

You say you disagree with them also.

Yes I do. But I'm not going to talk the issue to death.

No one is forcing you to reply to my posts.

taconnol wrote: »

kangaroo wrote:

I do think it is significant when people in positions of authority (how much higher can one go?) give these reasons. If people don't raise the issue, it could become the norm to use gender as a means of selecting people for posts.

Again, you have yet to prove that in this case gender was used as a means of selecting the person for the post. That's my whole point.

But part of my point was whether or not it was actually in this case, the signal was given by both our Taoiseach and the head of the European Commission that it was an acceptable factor to use in selecting a person.

Scofflaw

taconnol wrote: »

I know you have an axe to grind about gender quotas in politics, kangaroo. But my opinion remains the same that MGQ's gender really had nothing to do with it.

Yes, Barroso did mention it. And yes Cowen did mention it. But from what I know of Cowen, he was just happy to have a chance to pay lip-service to Barroso . Cowen would have gone for the FFer no matter the gender. FFers know that they will almost certainly be out of power by 2012 or earlier and having a FFer as the Irish Commissioner until 2014 is a no-brainer for Cowen.

I'm pretty certain that if you go through the list of possibilities, exclude everyone who's not FF, and exclude everyone whose absence would hurt Fianna Fáil's Dáil arithmetic, you wind up with Geoghegan-Quinn.

cordially,
Scofflaw

rumour

Scofflaw wrote: »

Not a bad portfolio for Ireland, I think.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Do you have any information as to what the portfolio incorporates and the budget in comparison to the other portfolio's?