Ms Orla O'Connor:

I will address the first question on the pension issue. What we are saying is not contradictory in respect of pension tax reliefs. The National Women's Council of Ireland is recommending a universal pension. This would be a pension available for everyone that would come from the State. That should be the priority. Let us consider what other countries do as well as the needs of women. Once we start putting in contribution requirements, we are immediately discriminating against people who spend time out to care. That is what is happening. We have a system of homemaker credits but they are rather limited. That is one of the reasons we are calling for a universal pension as a model. Then, if there is to be a second tier, it should be done through the PRSI system. No private model of pensions recognises time out of work. That should not be the case. The system should be equal for men and women but it is not at the moment. At the moment the career patterns of women end up changing significantly because of care responsibilities. No private pension model is going to accommodate that. When we look at the spend on pensions, we need to look at the income forgone on tax reliefs. If the tax forgone was invested in a universal pension, then we would have a far more equitable pension model.

A question was asked about the difference gender budgeting would make. Let us consider the Scottish model. Gender budgeting is a process all year round that involves consulting women's organisation and involves them in the process all the way through. It also looks at the individual requests from various Departments and what the various impacts on women could be. For example, let us consider the Department of Social Protection. We would be considering factors such as the issues around lone parents. If a gender budgeting process had been undertaken for this budget, the Government would probably have prioritised lone parents, because they were a particular group that experienced the most in cutbacks. Issues such as the disregard for lone parents and how to make it easier for lone parents to move into employment are critical. That is only one example. The child care scheme would probably have come out well under gender-proofing.

Let us consider the Scottish model again. As well as looking at individual Departments, the idea is to look at the overall spend and the associated impact on women. Dr. Healy referred to the models we use in making a calculation. We need to come up with a model that can look at impacts on women across the board in terms of overall spend. That is part of the work we want to undertake with the committee. I suppose that is what I meant when I said that this is not a tick the box exercise. This can make a real difference to the lives of women.