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

With regard to areas where I think we will all agree there needs to be progress, one area is pensions. It is worth reading the facts and research about the State pension. The difference in the average State pension paid to a man versus a woman is approximately 2%. Pensioner poverty in Ireland is higher among men than women. When it comes to the State pension, there is not significant inequality anymore in what is paid to men and women, or in pensioner poverty. There is when it comes to occupational pensions, which comes down to the fact that, historically, women have tended to work in lower paid roles and have been in and out of the workforce. The solution to that is to press ahead with the Minister, Deputy Doherty's, reforms relating to lawful enrolment, making sure that everyone who is at work pays into an occupational pension and that their employer does so too. That is how we will achieve, over time, the closing of the pension gap. We are pursuing the pay gap with legislation to require employers to produce information on the gender pay gap in their company or workplace and to explain why there is a difference. We need to strengthen that legislation to make sure that it is not just a reporting mechanism and that things actually change. We want to pursue that in the coming period.

I have met Catherine Day on occasion but I have not met her specifically on the issue of the Citizens' Assembly. I will have to think about whether I should or not. The advice from my officials is generally not to do anything that might be seen to interfere in a citizens' assembly, which means not meeting the chair and not calling out to meet the members of the assembly. I did not do it previously but I met the chair afterwards to hear how it went and to get advice on how it might be done better in the future. Meeting beforehand might be seen by some as interference but I have not decided on that yet. It is intended to have the first meeting by the end of the year, to have a report within six months of the first meeting, and to have the Oireachtas consider the report.

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