Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 13 March 2019

Committee on Budgetary Oversight

Scrutiny of European Commission Country Report Ireland 2019 and European Semester

Mr. Carlos Martínez Mongay:

When we talk about the low participation of women, we are not talking about someone's personal decision to do certain things. We are talking about the extent to which all the means exist for people to take their personal decisions. I do not think we are simply saying that women who do not work are under-utilised. We are flagging the fact that in this country, women's participation in the labour market is lower than it is in other countries. In principle, this is a personal social choice, but we are asking to what extent there are barriers that could prevent women from participating in the labour market. Perhaps this is a way to summarise something in a sentence which we understand to be much more complex than that. We are not flagging at all that women who decide-----