Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairperson and members of the committee for inviting me to discuss the Citizens' Assembly’s recommendations on gender equality and the work that my Department is doing to achieve gender equality in the workplace.

I am joined on my left by Ms Fiona O'Dea who covers company law matters at the Department and Ms Helena Quilty from the enterprise division, which monitors and provides support for the balance for better business initiative, of which some members will be aware. During the discussion I may defer to my officials on some of the issues and questions. Both Ms O'Dea and Ms Quilty know much more about what my Department is doing on these matters than I do and it would be strange if the man did all the talking when the two women beside me know most of the answers. I decided not to be the Wizard of Oz on this occasion so I may refer some of the questions to them.

As members know, the Citizens' Assembly was established on foot of an initiative by the previous Government in 2017, which I had the pleasure of leading. Following the result of the referendum to repeal the eighth amendment from the Constitution, it was an attempt to examine what the next steps would be in regard to gender equality in our country. The Citizens' Assembly has done some really good work and the members, chairperson and secretariat deserve our thanks for their deliberations, much of which was done during the pandemic.

As Deputies and Senators will be aware, my colleague, the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth,Deputy Roderic O’Gorman, is leading the Government’s work on the equality agenda, which is very much a joined-up Government initiative. This work includes the implementation of the new gender pay gap reporting legislation, which we are trying to get under way in workplaces, as well as legislation to enhance work-life balance, providing new and extended rights to parents and carers to seek flexibility in the workplace.

Also included is legislation to enhance work-life balance and to provide new and extended rights to parents and carers to seek flexibility in the workplace. He is also co-ordinating Ireland’s actions as part of the EU's Gender Equality Strategy 2020-2025, including a new requirement that 40% of non-executive directors on corporate boards must be from the under-represented gender, whether it be male or female. This was recently agreed as part of intensified negotiations on a long-standing proposal for an EU directive on gender balance on corporate boards and is very much in line with the objectives of Deputy Emer Higgins’s Private Members’ Bill which also seeks to deal with this matter.

From an enterprise perspective, it makes sense to have more women, and more diversity in general, on the boards and senior leadership teams of companies in Ireland. This is not just because it is the right thing to do, but also because it makes economic and business sense. Women represent half of the population, and therefore must represent half of the talent, so it matters to get gender equality right. The benefits of more diverse leadership teams in business are well established. There is evidence that companies with higher levels of gender diversity, and indeed diversity in general, on their boards and senior leadership teams achieve better economic performance. This is also about the bottom line.

We need a pipeline of talent in companies so that more diverse leadership teams and boards are possible and that it is not just the same people cropping up all the time. Young women and girls must be able to believe they can be the business leaders of tomorrow, and I believe they do. It is our collective responsibility to ensure this is the case. Since I established the Balance for Better Business initiative, there has been a steady and sizeable increase in the share of women on the largest listed company boards, rising from 18% in 2018, when we launched the initiative, to 32% in March this year. This is a significant achievement in a short time, but clearly more needs to be done. The objective is parity.

Change takes time, and I realise it may not be happening quickly enough, but the progress at board level in Ireland shows what can be achieved when companies focus on making a change. It should also be remembered that one of the primary reasons for the lack of women in leadership positions in business is not simply a lack of opportunity at senior levels in companies, but barriers at lower levels that are unlikely to be resolved by mandatory board quotas. Carefully monitored voluntary targets help to promote cultural and strategic change at the heart of companies.

The citizens' assembly identified that many women are working in precarious employment and are concerned about workplace conditions and employment security. While Ireland has a comprehensive body of employment rights legislation to protect all employees, in my time in this Department I have prioritised the enumeration of enhanced workers’ rights including a new public holiday, on St. Brigid’s Day or Imbolc, and the first to be named for a woman, the introduction of statutory sick pay, which will come into effect from 1 January 2023, new rights around redundancy for people laid-off temporarily during the pandemic, the right to request remote working, which is proving a challenge, but we are still working on it, and also the protection of workplace tips, the legislation concerning which has been enacted.

These initiatives will further improve the workplace for women, who have traditionally shouldered more caring responsibilities or have exited and then, later in life, sought to re-enter the workforce. Women are more likely to be receiving the national minimum wage and next year’s increase will translate into a pay increase of approximately €1,600 per annum, gross, or 7.6%, which is behind inflation but still well above average wage growth.

Turning to the recommendation regarding the establishment of a legal right to collective bargaining, my view is that collective bargaining is an important element of ensuring industrial relations stability and peace in Ireland. This stability comes from a voluntarist system, where the State does not seek to impose a solution on the parties to a dispute but will, where appropriate, assist them in arriving at a solution. This approach has served us well for many years. Employers can be required to meet representatives of a union, but no law can force both sides to come to an agreement. The Government supports increasing collective bargaining coverage in Ireland. In 2021, I established the independently-chaired, high-level group on collective bargaining, which has recently submitted its final report. The group’s recommendations will be given detailed consideration as we work on preparing an EU-mandated action plan to enhance collective bargaining coverage in Ireland. My Department continues to work closely with the Workplace Relations Commission to ensure that it has the necessary resources to provide its services, including inspections of employment rights compliance and the provision of adjudication, mediation and conciliation services. We allocated additional funding in 2022 to allow for more inspectors to be hired, and we have secured additional funding for 2023 in the budget that was just announced. We are also progressing other initiatives that will improve gender equality in the workplace.

My Department plans to ratify an International Labour Organization, ILO, convention on eliminating violence and harassment in the workplace before the end of the year. I had the pleasure of recently visiting the ILO's headquarters in Geneva. As I mentioned earlier, my colleague, the Minister, Deputy O’Gorman, is progressing the Work Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Bill 2022 which, among other provisions, proposes to introduce paid domestic violence leave. I know this has been an important issue for some members of this committee. Ireland has also supported recent policy initiatives on trade and gender at EU level which seek to influence the European Commission to take steps to maximise the benefits of trade for women.

I think it is fair to say that Ireland has made huge advances towards achieving gender equality in the past 20 years, and we continue to move in the right direction while others fall backwards, or at least some of them. We have a long way to go, though, to achieve gender equality and we are a republic unfinished until we do. I look forward to discussing these initiatives and any other relevant issues that the committee wishes to raise.