FIANNA Fail activist Brian Mohan wants the Court of Appeal to find he is entitled to challenge the constitutionality of a law linking State funding of political parties to the meeting of gender quota targets when selecting candidates for general elections.

Mr Mohan, as a member of FF and potential election candidate, is permanently affected by the law, Michael McDowell SC, for Mr Mohan, argued.

The State has no right to influence freely associating persons and political parties in relation to what kind of person they choose as a candidate, he said.

Maurice Collins SC, for the State, rejected arguments the High Court misapplied the law on legal standing in deciding Mr Mohan had no standing to challenge the constitutionality of the law.

Mr Mohan had produced no evidence to support his claim a September 2015 direction from FF headquarters to a Dublin Central general election selection convention that the sole candidate selected must be female was due to the law and not FF’s own policy to have more women candidates, counsel argued.

The direction was issued in a context where, by summer 2015, there were ten women among 47 FF candidates chosen in 31 constituencies. Mary Fitzpatrick was selected for Dublin Central.

In February 2016, the High Court ruled Mr Mohan did not have legal standing to bring his case and, as a result, did not determine whether or not the 2012 law was constitutional.

The three judge Court of Appeal heard Mr Mohan’s appeal against the High Court decision on Tuesday and reserved judgment.

The case concerns provisions of the Electoral (Political Funding) Act 2012 which halve State funding to parties who fail to ensure at least 30 per cent of their general election candidates are women and 30 per cent are men. That percentage is intended to rise to 40 per cent after seven years.

Women comprise 22pc of the current Dail, up from 16.3 pc before the last general election.

Mr Mohan claimed it would be impossible for Fianna Fail to function if its State funding of some €1.16m was halved.

The Court of Appeal must first decide if the legal standing finding was correct. If it finds otherwise, Mr Mohan wants the appeal court to determine the constitutionality of the legislation but the State argues that should go back to the High Court for a first instance decision.

On Tuesday, Mr McDowell argued Mr Mohan’s party is effectively being “coerced“ by a financial imperative to support gender quotas and that also made it difficult for Mr Mohan to argue internally with the party against such quotas.

It was “demanding too much” for the High Court to say Mr Mohan should have produced evidence from Fianna Fail itself to say it was adversely affected by the legislation.

Ordinary members of Fianna Fail had rejected the idea of gender quotas at two Ard Fheiseanna but the parliamentary party would probably be reluctant to publicly “tog out” in favour of Mr Mohan on the issue of quotas.

The 2012 law directly affected Mr Mohan at the convention and continues to do so, counsel said. Because of it, gender quotas were a matter of law, not a matter of choice for parties.

Mr Collins said Mr Mohan clearly had no legal standing to challenge the 2012 law and the High Court’s analysis of that issue was “unimpeachable”.

Fianna Fail and other parties are clearly qualified to challenge the legislation, including for reasons such as the impact of any withdrawal of funding, and had not done so, he said. There was no evidence to show a causal connection between what FF had done at the Dublin central selection convention and the 2012 law.

Online Editors