Former head of the European Commission Service Catherine Day has been appointed to chair the new Citizens’ Assembly on gender equality. She most recently chaired the Independent Review Group that was established in July 2017 to examine the role of voluntary organisations in publicly funded health and personal social services.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announced the appointment in the Dáil following Cabinet approval.

The assembly was originally scheduled to be up and running by the end of October but Mr Varadkar said it was now intended that the assembly would meet for the first time before the end of the year and will run over six months.

The Taoiseach told his Fine Gael party colleague Kildare North TD Bernard Durkan who raised the issue, that the secretariat was already in place and the next stage was to select 99 citizens to participate in the new assembly.

They will be chosen through random sampling of the electorate from the electoral register, following the completion of a tender process for a polling company to carry out the selection process.