Ms Ethel Buckley:

I will respond on collective bargaining, the voluntarist industrial relations mechanisms and the gender pay gap and will then defer to my colleague, Mr. Taft, who is the absolute expert on the minimum and living wages.

We often hear that the so-called voluntarist system of industrial relations in Ireland has served us well but it does not serve women workers or low-paid workers well. It does not serve them well because the voluntarist method allows certain employer bodies to completely veto collective bargaining and sectoral collective bargaining. There is a strong correlation between the feminised industries, those industries where women tend to work - and I am concentrating my comments on women unapologetically, in the context of this being the gender equality committee - like hospitality, retail, nursing homes, care and healthcare, and a lack of collective bargaining. There is no collective bargaining in those industries because the employer unions refuse to engage in collective bargaining. That is what they volunteer to do. Bodies like the Restaurants Association of Ireland, the Irish Hotels Federation and Nursing Homes Ireland will not have any truck with engaging in collective bargaining voluntarily. We need to understand that voluntarism serves some interests well but not those of workers.

We very much welcomed the report that was published yesterday and I accept Senator Higgins's earlier point that the proof of the pudding will be in the legislative measures that follow. Senator Pauline O'Reilly mentioned trade union membership and collective bargaining earlier and I would like to comment on that. The research, particularly some solid recent research from UCD on workers' attitudes towards trade unions, shows that workers in Ireland want trade unions. They want to be members of, and to participate in, trade unions. What group of workers wants unions the most? It is women workers. Women workers are the most positively disposed demographic to having unions in the workplace and the other most positively disposed group is young workers. Sometimes when one reads newspapers, listens to the media or to the establishment in Ireland, one would actually think that unions were a thing of the past or that there is enough legislation or regulation in place such that workers do not need unions any more. That is not the case and that is not how workers feel about unions.

The key reason for workers not unionising is fear. It is fear of victimisation and recrimination by anti-union employers. That is what we have to tackle in dealing with women's wages and working conditions. Workers in Ireland, whether Irish or migrant women who come here to work, need to make the decision to join a union as freely as workers in any other European Union country. The Republic of Ireland is a complete outlier in terms of its attitude towards unions. Women need to be able to make a free decision and they need to know that their employer will not discriminate against them if they are in a union or active in one. How do employers on the ground do that? When the WhatsApp messages are sent with the working hours for a hotel, restaurant, shop or bar, the workers are just not on the list. That is how employers do it. They just do not give them hours any more. There are other ways to discriminate too. The IBEC representatives mentioned career progression. People can be held back in their careers if management takes a certain view of them.

I will now move on from the collective bargaining issue to the gender pay gap issue. As well as gender pay gap legislation, we also need transparency legislation in Ireland. Again, the Irish solution to the Irish problem is voluntarism.

We campaigned and argued for us to have a role in the process. That point was made in submissions from ICTU, SIPTU and other unions. IBEC said it cannot fall only to employers. We wanted a role. Trade unions wanted a specified role in both the legislation and regulations on the gender pay gap in the workplace but, unfortunately, there is no role for trade unions under the regulations. The problem with that is that all the expertise we bring in respect of how to equalise pay - we have decades of that experience - and how to negotiate better pay structures, career progression and working conditions for flexible and part-time workers will not be taken into account. We could extend the kind of results we get in the public sector, where there is a pay gap of 6.1%, to the private sector if we were allowed to do so and if there was engagement with trade unions and we were at the table and listened to. I ask the committee to consider that.

I also ask the committee to please consider the fact there is no specified role for worker representatives in agreeing action plans. From December, employers with more than 250 employees will start to issue their reports. It cannot be the case that a company is named and shamed, it is in the media for a day or two and then the matter goes away for another year. We need to do something about the gender pay gaps that are reported. We want to be involved in that. We do not want it to be an employer, top-down and enforced solution. We want workers - the people who know the employment - to be involved. We want workplace democracy and engagement. We would love the committee to consider that and build in a role for worker representatives in tackling the gender pay gap in the workplace and agreeing action plans with employers. We have a very strong record of getting good results in that regard.

I will hand over to Mr. Taft to deal with the living wage.