Reviews [extracts] of McNamara, Maedhbh and Paschal Mooney, Women in Parliament:Ireland:1918-2000. Dublin, Wolfhound,2000.

This book combines fascinating biographical details of women elected to parliaments and an analysis of routes to power and obstacles in those pathways. Each section of the directory provides useful pen pictures of the powers of the various institutions and the method of election or nomination to them. [The analytical] section provides valuable information about women’s experience of politics. All in all, it is an invaluable source and a welcome addition to the literature on Irish politics and on women and politics.
--Elizabeth Meehan (Queen’s University Belfast). Saothar/Irish Journal of Labour History 26,2001.

The directory is an indispensable reference book; its most important contribution is to rescue the lesser-known Irish women politicians from obscurity…Many of these entries will modify the widely held view that women were conspicuous by their absence from Irish parliamentary life from the civil war until the onset of the modern women’s movement.
--Professor Mary E. Daly (University College Dublin). Irish Studies Review, Vol.9, Nr.3,December 2001.

As a reference book it is a very useful source because of its scope—the text begins with the first Dáil and ends with the Northern Ireland Assembly election of June 1998. The bibliographical information on the women politicians it deals with is at all time interesting. There is certainly no other single source where you will find the level of detail in such an accessible format. The analytical chapter provides a good statistical analysis of women’s experience in the Oireachtas and provides some detail from a survey conducted in 1999 of all women parliamentarians both current and retired. This book is a very useful addition to the reference material on women in Irish politics, it could become the first point of contact for basic biographical material on Irish women parliamentarians and its publication is to be very much welcomed.
--Eileen Connolly( Dublin City University). Irish Political Studies, Volume 16,2001.

*Directory entries summarise a wealth of information and are especially useful on committee and council membership. The best entries are those that draw on personal testimony,newspaper reporting or Oireachtas reports.
Women in Parliament:Ireland:1918-2000 is a valuable reference tool, its analysis and Directory providing a fulsome resource for general and specialist reader alike.*
--Mary Clancy (National University of Ireland Galway). Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society 24:2002.

Women in Parliament fills a major gap in Irish studies.
--John Cooney, Ireland on Sunday, 24 December 2000.

This handsomely produced volume is both a comprehensive reference book and a challenging look at the role of women in Irish politics.
--Stephen Collins, Sunday Tribune, 3 December 2000.

An admirable chronicle of the history of women in Irish politics.
--Liam Fay, Magill, January 2001.

This is a very useful reference book for those fascinated by politics—or who are just interested in the sometimes fascinating stories of the women who helped shape modern Ireland.
--Seán Boyne, Sunday World, 2 December 2000.

The directory contains some fascinating portraits of the lives of early women politicians, including many now forgotten. The book has some wonderfully selected quotes from Oireachtas debates to enliven the picture of women’s contribution and the context in which they made it.
--Eithne Fitzgerald, Irish Times, 16 December 2000.

In this nicely presented and easily followed guide to Irish women parliamentarians, the authors adopt an unexpectedly challenging position in extolling the virtues of the short-term imposition of electoral quotas for women candidates. This book groans with…scholarly insights.
--Justine McCarthy, Irish Independent, 9 December 2000.

One should really say parliaments for what a wealth of Assemblies are covered Westminster, the Dail, the Seanad(both pre and post-1937), the Northern Ireland House of Commons and Senate, the various subsequent Belfast Assemblies and Convention as well as the European Parliament particularly nloyt edf or shyness. This is not a book to be read at one sitting: it is basically for reference What a variety of people we meet in its pages and what delightful snippets of information are to be found.
Dublin Historical Record, Vol. 54, No. 2 (Autumn, 2001), pp. 228-229

Published by: Old Dublin Society