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

Closing the gender pay gap is not in the national reform programme but I agree with Deputy O'Reilly that just because something is not in the national reform programme does not mean we should not do it. We should do it and we have a number of actions under way. The first is the gender pay Bill, which is going to the Oireachtas joint committee next week. I encourage all parties to work together to make sure we have pre-legislative scrutiny done next week and can progress the legislation. It will require companies and employers with more than 250 staff initially to be phased subsequently to 50 or more staff, to produce data on their gender pay gap so we can see where it exists.

It also enables us to drill down a bit more into the reasons for gender pay gaps among different employers. There can be many different reasons.

We have had equal pay for equal work since the 1970s but that is different from gender pay and very often it is because it is much more difficult for women to make their way up the promotional ladder. In higher education institutions, for example, 50% of lecturers are women, but only 25% of professors are women. That can be seen across the public service and in private sector companies as well. We need to push the promotion of more women in the workplace. Deputies will be aware of the package of actions published by Minister of State, Deputy Mitchell O'Connor, on Monday. We need to do those kinds of things across all parts of the public sector and in the private sector. In the next few weeks I will be involved in an initiative to encourage the promotion of more women to the boards of private companies, similar to what has been done in the UK. We have already made some good progress with State boards in that regard. More than 52% of people appointed to State boards through the PAS process were female - a majority for the first time. More than 40% of members of State boards are now women.

Actions such as increases in the national minimum wage disproportionately benefit women because more women are earning the minimum wage. In January, the fourth increase since 2011 will kick in. There are many other similar actions.

I had an opportunity to look at the Central Bank report on the code of conduct on mortgage arrears in recent days. The percentage of people in mortgage arrears of more than 90 days is 7%. People may often miss payments, but the number who are more than three months in arrears is now down to approximately 7%. That is a really dramatic fall. The number of people in mortgage arrears used to be 15% to 20% and it is now 7%. Some 120,000 mortgage loans have been restructured, which is a considerable number. Sometimes that means changing the term; sometimes it means a reduced interest rate; sometimes it means making it a split mortgage; and sometimes it can involve write-downs as well. Some 93% of people are paying their mortgages and are meeting their repayment schedules. Many of them are also struggling to do so, but are meeting them. However, tens of thousands are still in mortgage distress and we need to put in place workable solutions for them. Every circumstance is different and no one size fits all. In some cases it will involve restructuring the loans. There are many ways to do that, such as reduced interest rates and longer terms. In some cases it may be write-downs and in some cases it may be people voluntarily surrendering the home they are mortgaging to move to a smaller home for which they are better able to afford the rent or mortgage. There are many different solutions and it is necessary to look at each case individually.

It is not lawful for me or the Minister for Finance to make directions to the commercial banks even where we own a portion or a significant portion of the shares. They must operate independently and commercially. There are many reasons for that under European and Irish law. I would be happy to send on to Deputy Burton a primer explaining how it works.

Core to the solution to the housing issue is the supply of new homes and apartments. We need more homes and apartments for people to live in. Last year, the population increased by over 60,000. It stands to reason, therefore, that we need to be building at least 30,000 new homes and apartments every year just to meet the rise in demand of a country with an expanding population and an expanding economy. However, we are not doing that yet. We need to ramp up the supply of new houses and apartments of all sorts. We need homes for people to buy, homes for people to rent and also social housing. We need all those kinds of housing and also need cost rental.

We are making progress. We will build between 18,000 and 20,000 new homes this year, which is up from 15,000 last year - it was less than 10,000 the previous year and perhaps 5,000 the year before. If we could ramp it up quicker, I guarantee that we would. However, there are capacity constraints and limitations as to how quickly we can ramp up the building of new homes. To have gone from less than 5,000 a few years ago to nearly 20,000 this year, with more new homes being built this year than in any other year this decade represents considerable progress. I fully accept that it is not happening fast enough. We will do everything we can to speed up the rate of construction growth until it gets to the sustainable level of 30,000 to 35,000 new homes being built every year which is what we need to meet and get ahead of demand.

The CSO figures released this week speak for themselves. A total of 4,673 new homes were built in the three months to September, which means that 4,673 individuals and families in those three months being able to move into new homes and apartments. The big increase was in housing schemes. The increase in one-off housing was only 26%, but the increase in housing schemes, housing estates essentially, was 40% year on year, which is a pretty big increase in the number of new housing estates being built. It is disappointing that we have not seen a similar increase in the number of apartments being built, particularly in the cities where many single people want one-bedroom apartments and many people want to rent. The number of apartments being built is not increasing at all.

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