Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I have one final specific question. Does the IHREC have an opinion on pay equality and the pay inequality among public service workers and if this falls foul of the standard of equality one would expect in employment?

It is now illegal to pay people differently for doing the same job based on their sex, yet we have institutionalised inequality in having three different pay scales in the public sector. It is the legacy of the financial emergency legislation and austerity but if some might claim justification for this at one point, for two people to work side-by-side on different rates now is an equality issue. That discrimination is not based on sex, although it probably hits women workers worse. While it is not gender-based discrimination per se, it is an arbitrary form of discrimination based on when a person happened to commence employment.

However, it is an arbitrary form of discrimination. Based on when a person happened to commence employment, that person will be on a different payscale for the rest of her life. With all the talk of pay restoration, there is still no commitment to eliminate that pay discrimination. Is that covered by equality legislation?