Ms Orla O'Connor:

On behalf of the National Women's Council I thank the committee for the opportunity to speak here today. As members know, the council is the leading national membership organisation for women in Ireland. We are a feminist organisation and we seek full equality for women in Ireland. We welcome the invitation to meet the committee today and we also welcome the establishment of the budgetary oversight committee because it provides an important opportunity for greater Oireachtas oversight of and input to the budgetary process.

We commend the commitment in the programme for partnership Government to devote two thirds of budgetary spending on public investment as against one third on tax measures and acknowledge the fulfilment of that commitment in budget 2017. We recognise the pressures on Government in terms of bringing together the budget but our main comments on budget 2017 will focus on issues of taxation, child care, income, pensions and gender and equality budgeting.

We believe that the tax concessions in budget 2017, such as the reduction in the universal social charge, USC, and the increased thresholds for capital acquisitions tax, CAT, do not represent a strategic use of hard-earned public funds. Budget 2017 gave us an opportunity to discontinue marginal tax reliefs on pensions, for example, but this did not happen. The opportunity to redress some of the inequities in our taxation system was not taken.

On a positive note, the National Women's Council really welcomes the introduction of the single affordable child care scheme. This is a really important measure. The council has long campaigned for the introduction of publicly subsidised universal child care and the single affordable child care scheme represents a good start. However, I must emphasise that it is only a start. It is similar to many models of child care in other European countries for which we have advocated. The lack of child care in Ireland is still one of the most significant barriers to women's participation in society, including in employment, civic and political life. We welcome the fact that there is a universal element within the child care subsidy so that all families can benefit. This recognises that all families have child care needs which is critical. We also welcome the fact that payments will be made directly to the service providers. This is very important in the context of ensuring that State funding is linked directly to quality service provision. That said, it is critically important that providers of child care do not increase their costs. There are some gaps in the scheme and we will be working with the Department to improve it before it is rolled out next September. One of the issues to be addressed is the capping of child care costs so that prices are not increased, thus making child care less affordable for parents.

The council recommended, prior to budget 2017, that the minimum wage be increased to what is called the living wage, that is, to €11.50 per hour. This did not happen but it remains the council's recommendation in the context of the next budget. A number of issues arise with regard to social welfare but I wish to focus on pensions in particular. Pensions are a critical issue for women in Ireland because of the inequities within the system. The gender pension gap has widened and now stands at 37%. While we welcome the increase of €5 in pension payments we firmly believe, based on our international research and on consulting widely with women, that a universal pension is the best way to support equality in older age. We recommend that this committee makes this a priority over the next year and we will also be saying the same to the Department of Social Protection. This has been a long standing call of the National Women's Council of Ireland. Currently 84% of those receiving a full State contributory pension are men. While this payment was protected during the recession, the reduced rate payments on which a majority of women rely have been steadily eroded. The fact that only 16% of women receive the full contributory rate reflects both the legacy of the marriage bar and a system poorly designed to support individual entitlement or to recognise care. Rather than addressing these inequalities, the State has allowed them to deepen in recent years by increasing contributory thresholds and making it harder for women to access a full contributory pension. This is a critical issue for women because of the legacy issues already mentioned and also in terms of how we deal with it going forward. Currently we are not assisting women to access pensions but are making it harder for them.

The final issue I wish to deal with is gender and equality budgeting, which goes to the heart of equality for women and to the heart of our budgetary process. In looking to budget 2018 and beyond, the council wishes to offer its support to this committee to embed a process of gender and equality budgeting that would be in line with the Government’s commitment in A Programme for a Partnership Government.

These are commitments we welcomed. We believe these new mechanisms must be meaningfully developed and delivered. This is not a tick box exercise. Gender budgeting, if implemented effectively, has the potential to address structural economic inequalities for women and to allow the Government to assess the extent to which provisions made to improve the lives of women and men are achieving their intended impact. We have also received funding from the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission to support the work on gender budgeting and we want to work with the committee to do that.

Having listened to the address of the First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, in the Seanad yesterday, it is appropriate to point out that we have a good deal to learn from Scotland on gender budgeting, which was discussed yesterday. The fact that in Scotland they produce an annual budget equality statement is a positive step and it is one that could be taken up in an Irish context. We ask that in budget 2018 a similar statement would be produced that would accompany the budget, which would be the start of a process in assessing budgetary demands from different Departments before they are implemented and, similarly, when the budget is produced that it would be done after that process. A before and after process in that respect is critical to having a proper gender budgeting process.

We thank the committee once again for this opportunity to present our views and we are happy to answer any questions on our submission that members may have.