'Grit, determination and perseverance': Women at the cabinet table

Martina Fitzgerald has written a book exploring why just 19 women have held ministerial roles in Ireland’s history. RTÉ’s political correspondent talks gender politics and explains why she has no desire to be on the other side of the microphone

Martina Fitzgerald: ‘In 1990, we had Mary Robinson, and we thought there would be a watershed for female politicians. But it has been too slow’

When Martina Fitzgerald’s father needed to get his kids up for school, he turned on the radio. “That was his way of telling us to get cracking,” Fitzgerald recalls, “meaning that from the moment we woke there was news in the air.”

The RTÉ political correspondent can trace her attraction to current affairs back to those early mornings on her family’s farm in Co Meath. Along with the farm, her parents owned a ...