Mr. Declan Lawlor:

From the experience of running our courses, I believe there are two aspects to it. One is the purely financial piece, that is, that people will suffer a loss of income for a 12-month period. It could also be that people might not be entitled to a full State pension when they get to 66. People get credits for years they are out of the workforce minding children and so on under the homemaker's scheme so that should be okay. While I have no evidence for this, I suspect it may be the case that the disparity between males and females could be caused by a lower percentage of females being members of occupational pension schemes because they have worked in occupations that historically have not provided an occupational pension. I refer to the service industries, retail and so on. That may be a factor in the difference between numbers for males and females.