Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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This was something the sector asked me to prioritise because it saw it could reach a set of young people the social welfare office was far away from and with which there was no connection.

On gender pay gap information, the goal is to have the database as a website where people can put in the name of a company and look at its database. I am told that is a relatively complicated website. I had hoped to have that up by now. It is not up yet but we are working to get that done. By the end of this year or early 2025, we will hopefully see that website up and running.

I absolutely agree with the Senator that the provision of early learning and care is an equality issue. It is a gender equality issue, but also one in the context of disadvantage. I feel our Department has embraced the idea of "those furthest behind first". I point to two things. The access and inclusion model, AIM, programme helps children with a disability to access the early childhood care and education, ECCE, scheme for three hours per week of free preschool. We have received investment, so AIM will be extended from September this year. Where children used to be supported for just three hours through an AIM worker, they will now be supported for the full day and outside the 38 hours of the AIM term. Significant investment in AIM does not mean that more children will benefit, but that those children who benefit from the programme will get a greater benefit from September. It would be my hope to be able to start extending AIM further.

The Senator mentioned the local area child poverty initiatives, but I am sure she is aware of the Equal Start initiative I launched two weeks ago, which is a DEIS model for early years. From September, 750 early-years services around the country, covering 32,000 children, will receive additional funding to increase the number of staff they have, so staff can spend more time directly with children, supporting parents or on a range of other issues. Many childcare services are doing this already, but this will give them recognition. It is a €13 million investment in its first year. I hope to grow this initiative. There are a couple of discrete initiatives under it. We are in particular looking to put in place a Traveller and Roma officer in Better Start to specifically encourage reaching out to Traveller and Roma families where we know participation in the ECCE scheme is significantly lower than within the settled population.

I turn to gender and equality proofing of the budget. I agree with the Senator. I am proud that all four budgets passed by this Government have been socially progressive and independently assessed as socially progressive in that the greatest transfers benefited those in the lowest deciles. We will certainly continue to advocate for that significant degree of gender and equality proofing in the decisions we make in our Department and across all of government to ensure these issues are discussed. Meetings now taking place, particularly at Cabinet subcommittees, all have a budget focus. We will be meeting in the Cabinet committee on education, children and disability. Child poverty is one of the issues we will be addressing there. During the Dáil debate on the referendum, I made significant reference to the update we had at that point on the wider gender equality action plan stemming from the recommendations of the citizens' assembly. A lot has been done in the area of early years, domestic, sexual and gender-based violence, DSGBV, and leave. There are other parts where there is more to do. There may be an opportunity to debate where we are on that during the next Seanad term and get into those issues in more detail.