The local election counts are almost finished.

And with them have come a significant increase in the number of female candidates set to take seats on county councils. The past few years has seen a push for more women in Irish politics with the introduction of gender quotas, gender specific campaign training, and an encouragement for more women to run for election. The conversation has been encouraged by the Women for Election group, who have been promoting the need for more women in local and national government since 2012. Over the past few years, they have trained over 1,000 women to run for election in Ireland and EU member states. They believe that Ireland can achieve 50 percent female representative in politics over the coming years. With the counts for last week's local election almost complete, it's clear that a considerably higher number of women are going to be taking councillor seats this year. Among them is Hazel Chu who received one of the highest number of first preferences for a first time candidate for local elections in Irish history. https://twitter.com/hazechu/status/1132619656450236418 https://twitter.com/Ciairin/status/1132659092428922881 https://twitter.com/JoyceFegan/status/1132759492280705033 https://twitter.com/horganjonesjane/status/1132718308611035137 https://twitter.com/PeterTanham/status/1132957877348511745 https://twitter.com/louheavin/status/1132789609145032704 https://twitter.com/CarrollJennifer/status/1132389236097900546 https://twitter.com/johnmdoody/status/1132956366799298562 Despite this, things could always be moving faster in Ireland when it comes to women in politics. Out of the close to 2,000 candidates who put themselves forward to contest local seats this year, 560 were women.  This works out at just over one quarter, which may not seem like a whole lot, but it's still a considerable increase in candidates compared to the past few years. Similarly, more and more parties have successfully reached their gender balance quotas in recent years, with some smaller parties including more women than men. However, the LE results show that many county councils across the country are still going to be operating with considerably more men than women. The Kilkenny People reports that as of yesterday evening, just three of their 24 seats have been filled by women. Just 22 percent of the current Dáil is made up of women.