Mr. Fergus Sharpe:

Regarding the impact of low female workforce participation on members of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, we should say at the outset that there is a lot we could achieve here compared to our northern European counterparts. The gap in labour market participation between men and women is currently 10.4%. That is around the EU average, but that does not take into account the fact that there are wide variations in the EU, particularly between northern and southern Europe. There is a gap of about 25% in Malta, while in Northern Europe countries like Denmark and Sweden achieve a gender gap in labour market participation of about 5%. Our gap is double that. If we could even get that 5% into the workforce, it could ease a lot of pressure in terms of skills availability and wage costs.

There is certainly a lot of business feedback to support the impact this is having on business. Overall, more than three quarters of Dublin members report that the cost of childcare has a material impact on their business. It affects both cost and availability of staff for 40% of our members. It solely affects the availability of staff for a quarter of members and solely the cost of staff for one member in ten. That is according to our most recent business risk outlook survey.

Regarding our specific asks, we welcome the single affordable childcare scheme as a positive step in the right direction. We would like to see a significant expansion in fiscal support for that scheme in the coming year, specifically with a view to increasing female labour market participation. Second, we would like to see an examination of the impact of the tax system on the decision of a second earner in a household to return to work. This is something which tends to affect families and working couples, particularly at a higher income level. Based on our engagement with officials in the Department of Finance, whose counterparts in the Department of Children and Youth Affairs we will engage with in the coming week, there has been no official study looking at the impact of this on female labour market participation. We would like to see a proper examination of how the tax system serves to discourage second earners from returning to the workforce and how that will interact with the new affordable childcare scheme.