Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am not sure who Deputy Burton was referring to as being male, pale or stale. I am definitely not pale. When we talk about gender equality and gender diversity, whether in politics, the workplace or in any field of life, I do not think it is right to be diminutive or dismissive of anyone based on their gender, pallor or level of experience. I hope that when we talk about these issues, we will not use that kind of language about anyone, whether it is men or women, older people or younger people, white people or black people. I do not think that sort of language serves us well.

I agree with Deputy Martin's assessment on the Citizens' Assembly. It would very much tie in with Ms Justice Laffoy's assessment that the assembly works best when it is asked to examine specific proposals rather than wide-ranging issues, as well as having the input of the Oireachtas and people with experience of legislation, policy and politics. This can be useful and we saw that very much with the process around the eighth amendment.

The gender pay Bill was discussed at the Cabinet just this week. I would like to have the legislation passed in this calendar year if that can be done. It could be done with a bit of give and take and compromise. The best thing to do might be for the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Flanagan, or the Minister of State, Deputy Stanton, to sit down with the Bill's sponsor, Senator Bacik, to see if it is possible to amend the Bill, as passed by the Seanad. With goodwill and compromise all around, that is achievable and we could get the legislation enacted by the end of the year and actually implemented next year. I would be very open to that.

On the Dublin Citizens' Assembly, there are many different ideas as to how local government should work. In Cork city, Limerick and Waterford, we will be offering people a plebiscite on a directly elected mayor with executive powers. Dublin is more complicated because it has four local authorities to which people feel differing degrees of attachment. The proposal put forward by Fianna Fáil and the Greens in the past was that the four authorities would stay with their own mayors and then there would be a super assembly with a super mayor. It would be a whole new layer of governance with a directly elected mayor over that. That might work.

My preferred model, however, is a different one which is more akin to London and Paris which I accept are much larger cities. It would be one where one would have a single Dublin authority, say a greater Dublin council, with a directly elected mayor over it. Then there would be many small borough councils to which people would feel they have an identity or connection, whether it is Swords, Lucan, Blanchardstown or Malahide.

I do not have the monopoly of wisdom on this nor do I claim to. That is why a Citizens' Assembly would be valuable in asking the people of Dublin what they think would work best. Deputy Eamon Ryan has proposed the assembly should also involve a number of councillors and politicians.

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We will give consideration to that matter. The Constitutional Convention worked on that basis. On its make-up, two thirds of its members were citizens, while one third were politicians. Perhaps something along the lines of that model might work.

On proposals for other citizens' assemblies, we can only have so many at any one time. The plan is to approve before the end of the year the proposal for a Dublin citizens' assembly and a citizens' assembly on gender equality and have them meeting next year. I am totally open to suggestions for citizens' assemblies that might follow, but there is limited bandwidth in determining how many there can be at any one time. It is best to have one or two at a time properly, rather than trying to have four or five at the same time.

I was asked about the expert group on sexual violence. It has either completed its work or almost completed it. The Government will proceed with the new survey of gender based violence to follow up on the SAVI report from ten years ago. It was necessary to involve the Central Statistics Office, CSO, because we wanted to make sure it was accurate. As people are increasingly relying on the CSO to provide accurate statistics, it took a bit of time. Also, there was an issue with what would happen if somebody reported during the survey that they had been a victim of gender based or sexual violence because we now have many rules for mandatory reporting which would not have been in place ten years ago. There were many issues in that regard. For example, would the person carrying out the survey then have an obligation to make a report to the Garda and so on? Matters about which many people and I did not think have become issues, given that so much has changed in ten years. However, we intend to do it with the involvement of the CSO which will give everyone confidence that the results will be accurate.

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