Media Matters is a regular blog written by Orlaith Carmody. All views expressed are personal!

Just after nine this morning I nearly fell off the cross trainer laughing, listening to Miriam O Callaghan talk about the joys of being a working mother on RTE One with John Murray.  On the night before she was facing into the leaders debate live on RTE - no pressure! – she hardly got a wink of sleep. Her insomniac little son was insisting on Thomas the Tank Engine in the later part of the evening and then, after finally getting to bed, she had to get up again at 2am to sort out the puppy poo on the stairs. 

And this is a woman who is all blonde hair and pouts at the cameras, if we are to believe David McWilliams.

She describes so accurately the life most working women lead every day, juggling family life with a working week, even if most  jobs aren’t quite as glamorous as Miriam’s.  But in some ways, her job is much harder than yours or mine, simply because she does in the public eye.  She also told John Murray this morning that she was going to wear the oldest, plainest black dress or suit she could find at the back of the wardrobe, so that what she wore would not become a talking point, and people would concentrate on the issues.

So there she is at 2 in the morning, sorting out the puppy, settling the eight kids – yes, that’s right, eight kids – worrying about what to wear, and trying to remember the brief , and she does it all so competently and well.  She is a remarkable role model to women everywhere and no, I won’t hear a word about her accent.  I haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting her, but I come from South Dublin too, and happen to think it is the best kind of accent out there!

As the Leaders Debate was underway tonight the Twitter sphere was alight with comments about how they were all performing, and whether Miriam was moving things along enough. I would suggest that in the first part of the programme she was slightly off mike, and hadn’t enough volume, and was also hampered by the very structured format of the debate, and the number of issues to be gone through.

The IMF and NAMA dominated the first third of the programme, with Tweeters rightly commenting when were we ever going to get to the issues that people really care about – the health service, gender balance, equality and social justice. Those issues were given a cursory few minutes towards the very end of the programme, a sad indication of the things that the male dominated political landscape in this country seems to cater for. 

We all know we need more women in politics, but we are no nearer to clearing the obstacles identified by women politicians and academics that keep us out – namely the five Cs of childcare, cash, confidence, culture and candidate selection. It is still all to be done, if we want to move up the world league table of our current dismal ranking  of 82^nd in female representation in parliament.