Dr. Kara McGann:

I thank the Deputy for the question. The whole area of returners is very important to us and we have been working with employers for quite some time on how to look at the untapped area of women who wish to return to work after caring responsibilities and others, including older workers, coming back. The returner programme approach is key to bridge the gap with any skills area as well as the confidence areas for people who wish to return to work and pick up their career again. It is crucial that those supports are in place. We are doing a piece of work with the Department of Social Protection on the area of returners and with Skillnet and the education and training boards, ETBs, about putting programmes in place to provide support on the skill side and to build back confidence, because it can be difficult to return when you feel you networks have moved on or things have changed since you were last in the workplace. Employers are taking that on board and we have seen many fantastic programmes put in place. Skillnet has a programme called Women ReBOOT, which is specific to the tech sector. There are some good practices we can build on and broaden across sectors.

What is key is that we have that support in place and that we ensure that people are getting back in, getting up to speed and then progressing through their careers.

In regard to the point on shared caring responsibilities, that is also key in considering men and women both as having caring responsibilities and not seeing that as an obstacle to career progression. We know that care traditionally defaults to women and that has an impact on the gender pay gap. It widens significantly after women have children but that imbalance could be reduced if there were greater opportunities for balancing care for men and women. We are encouraging organisations to encourage equal uptake of family leave and the range of flexible arrangements to ensure they are not reduced to something that only female employees avail of. We also encourage organisations to promote examples of senior colleagues who have availed of such leave to ensure it is clear that the organisation supports and welcomes that and it is not an obstacle to career progression.

In regard to Ms Buckley’s point about the possibility that if more women take up flexible arrangements it could work against them, we must be absolutely thorough in stamping that out. We cannot have a two-tier situation where the “real” employee goes back to the office and the others stay remote. We cannot have that. That will require a change in how we work and training of our managers and systems. That is necessary and appropriate to have in this new way of working. We are seeing organisations taking that up.