Several women from across Co Leitrim will take part in a special meeting this afternoon to highlight the lack of female representations at local government level.
Leitrim County Council will hold a special half hour meeting at 3 o' clock this afternoon following the usual plenary meeting this morning.
Women from local groups across the three municipal districts have been asked to come and take the seats usually held by the 15 male county councillors on the Leitrim authority during the special meeting.
The meeting is one a number being held to mark International Women's Day taking place this week.
Finola Armstrong Maguire, one of the three female members of Leitrim council says the exercise will serve to highlight the major gender imbalance on the vast majority of local authorities.
We'll have a short meeting, we'll discuss topics , related particularly to the fact that we haven't got the gender balance.
It'll be well represented from the three municipal areas , and from a wide variety of age groups.
It would have been very difficult to select what ladies should come in to the meeting, so I would have just gone to each municipal area to send reps from the women's groups.
Other local councils in the region will carry out similar exercises this week with women taking over the seats normally held by men who've been elected during the last local elections, with Longford council holding that meeting today, and Roscommon Council carrying out the gender reversal on this Wednesday.
