A women's rights campaigner says the general election needs to be a breakthrough in gender equality.

Figures published in the Irish Times toady show most parties are on track to reach the gender quota ahead of the election - but Fianna Fáil is lagging behind.

Every party must field at least 30% female candidates, or face a 50% cut in funding from the exchequer.

Orla O'Connor is the director of the National Women's Council of Ireland.

She says gender quotas are necessary to make Irish politics more representative.

"I just think this issue in terms of 'has the gender quotas skewed things a little bit in terms of democratic processes?' - it is fundamentally undemocratic to have 84 percent of our representatives in the Dáil being male, and that's what has to change in this election", she told Newstalk Breakfast.

"And that's why it's really important that this election is a breakthrough for women and is a breakthrough for women's equality" she added.

While Joanna Tuffy, Labour TD for Dublin Mid-West, says politics is changing regardless of gender quotas.

"Parties like Labour...when I was first elected in 2007, we had 30% women TDs elected to the Dáil at that stage" she said.

"We did that without gender quotas".

"And if you look at the smaller parties, and the newer parties and the left-wing parties - if you look at them now and over the course of our history, they've had a better record".

"And politics is changing" she added.