Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

It is also the case that during those austerity years pensions were cut for women. Services like home help and special needs assistance, SNA, were cut, again jobs largely done by women. Their levels and their pay were cut. The legacy of austerity also looms large here. It is good to document these things but they will not go away until we set out to improve our industrial relations machinery, which barely recognises the existing legislation.

I note that the provisions in the Minister of State's proposed Bill argue for personnel from the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, to conduct on-site inspections to ensure compliance on gender information, but there is a problem. We recently attended a committee on bogus self-employment with the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Deputy Regina Doherty. From questioning the Department we were able to show that when inspectors go on-site to check the statistics on bogus self-employment, they do not actually do it. They do not keep statistics on bogus self-employment. We have industrial relations machinery that is not fit for purpose. It is certainly not fit for purpose in terms of keeping track of inequality that exists between men and women on the one hand and the same workers in the same sectors on the other because of the austerity.

We have had a plethora of strikes recently including Lloyds Pharmacy, Dunnes Stores, Tesco, teachers and nurses, of which the workforce is largely female. Those strikes in the private sector in particular are often based on the lack of a permanent secure job, precarious work, the lack of contracts and issues of inequality. I am glad to say all those strikes took place because the workers were unionised. From that we should learn that as well as producing papers that record inequality in a particular manner, we have to end the impact of austerity and the inequality. However, we also must ensure that in every workplace we do as much as we possibly can to get workers into unions, and get them mobilised through those unions, to achieve their rights.

In April of this year, it was revealed that Ryanair pay women on average 72% less than men in terms of mean hourly pay. That means for every €1 a man earns, a woman earns 28 cent. Ryanair said that eight of the 555 pilots in the UK are women. That is equivalent to 1.4% of all pilots. The inequality is impounded by companies in which unions do not exist. I greatly welcome the unionisation earlier this year of Ryanair and that the company, given those unequal statistics as well as its record, was forced to recognise the trade unions, which hopefully will be able to do something to close that gender pay gap. We all know the reason for that is the nature of the work women largely do in the airline such as ground staff and crew as against the number of women being trained as pilots.

We can safely say the gender pay gap in Ireland is probably the worst in the EU. We should stop eulogising the European Union as some kind of deliverer of rights for women or advances in terms of equality because that is not the case. Where women have fought and won equality in pay and in status in their jobs, which was mentioned by Deputies earlier in terms of fighting for same sex marriage, the repeal of the eighth amendment on abortion rights and proper childcare, that was done by women campaigning both through their unions and outside the gates of this House.

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