Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

That is true but the point is that there is a Bill here now which the Seanad has gone through and it debated amendments on Committee Stage. It was open to the Government side to present its own amendments and Sinn Féin amendments were accepted. If there are further amendments to make, let us debate them rather than to pretend there is a difficulty.

I thank Deputies for the thoughtful contributions. I should not be enticed to respond to Deputy Bríd Smith, who is congenitally incapable of making a speech in the House without attacking the Labour Party, but I need to correct a few factual points. She said as a matter of course that Ireland was the worst in the EU in terms of pay equality. In fact, if one looks at the actual statistics published by the OECD, Ireland is better than Spain, Lithuania, Cyprus, Sweden, the Netherlands, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Finland, the United Kingdom, Latvia and Estonia. She also said the European Union was no good as it was no guarantee of gender pay equality. In fact, eight of the ten best performers on pay equality are EU member states. I will not bother going into her other inaccuracies about our term in government. She said that during the term of Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, who is sitting beside me, as Minister for Education and Skills, SNAs were reduced. In fact, they were massively increased in our time in government. In some politics, facts matter no more, but I try to be factual here.

As a smaller party, the Labour Party's Private Members' time is scarce. We have selected this Bill to bring through all Stages because it has been already passed by the other House. I ask the Minister of State to think again. He will be defeated anyway. He knows that. However, it does not matter because he will use other tactics and deny the Bill a money message. Nevertheless, I ask him to allow the Bill to proceed on Committee Stage and to provide the money message. I give him my own guarantee that if there are insuperable problems that the Minister of State finds with the Bill then and his own Bill is galloping up apace, we will address that problem with an open mind. Let us solve the problem now. Let us pass the legislation and show across the House that we are committed to pay equality in this country.

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