Stories from Irish Women in Poitical Power. Over the past century, Ireland has appointed a grand total of 18 female ministers since the founding of the Free State.Countess Markievicz was the first, but it wasnt until 1979 that Maire Geoghegan-Quinn joined her. In other words, it took 50 years for a second woman to be deemed worthy of a seat at the cabinet table and, since then, the floodgates havent exactly opened 16 others have been offered a full brief, and about the same number again have been elevated to junior ministerial positions. To look at the cabinet portraits of the past four decades is, more often than not, to sakriti opis