The Citizens' Assembly was supposed to start in October, but it was finally postponed to the end of the year, and will run over for 6 months.
After a first citizens' assembly in 2016, the Irish government decided to launch a new one about gender equality. The Citizens' Assembly will focus on gender pay gap, the co-responsibility for parental care and women empowerment. The aim of the Citizens' Assembly will be to examine and to bring forward proposals on gender equality.
Therefore, a panel of 99 citizens will be randomly selected from the electoral register in order to be representative of the population. The conclusions of the citizen assembly will then be transferred to the House of the Oireachtas, Ireland's legislature so they can rule about the proposals.
After that, another citizens' assembly will take place on the issue of local government with a different 99 people panel. This Citizens' Assembly will have to examine the model of local government of Dublin. Indeed, the Assembly will, for example, look at the issue of having a directly elected mayor or not.
The Citizens' Assembly on gender equality will be chaired by Dr Catherine Day, the former Secretary General of the European Commission. The organization of such a Citizens' Assembly reflects the will of Irish government to make Ireland an equal country as the Taoiseach declared that " I don't think anyone can argue, for a second, that Ireland is a country in which men and women are equal".
More information:
https://www.thejournal.ie/citizens-assembly-gender-equality-4678355-Jun2019/
https://citizensassemblyni.org/
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