Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Today is the first opportunity for the Oireachtas to discuss the report of the Citizens' Assembly on Gender Equality. I want to begin my contribution by commending and thanking those citizens - the 99 women and men, and the Chair - who gave their time and consideration to developing the 45 recommendations that have come from the citizens' assembly seeking to achieve greater gender equality in Ireland.

Covid-19 provided an unexpected and unwelcome interruption to their work. It is a credit to the chair, Catherine Day, and the team working with her, for innovating and allowing the citizens' assembly to continue in a virtual format. It is striking that, at such a difficult time in our country's history, the members of the citizens' assembly made time in their lives and homes for this important work, working to create a more equal Ireland. They have given us an example of citizenship at work, one that we should all hope to emulate. In as much as we thank them, it is important also to thank the families of those 99 individuals. As we know, when meetings are held by way of Zoom or Skype, a room is out of play and the family have to help to keep the dog quiet, look after the children or whatever. Therefore, I recognise the work of those individuals' families.

I also want to particularly thank Catherine Day for taking on the role of chair in this process and leading the citizens' assembly so effectively in the face of the challenges thrown up by Covid-19. As the Minister with responsibility for gender equality, many of the recommendations relate to my work but a good many others fall under the responsibility of a number of my ministerial colleagues and I will work with them to provide these with the necessary in-depth consideration.

It is illustrative of the need for gender equality mainstreaming across society if we are truly to make a difference in gender equality. As the members of the Citizen's Assembly on Gender Equality set out in their open letter to the Oireachtas, "we looked back into Ireland's history, we looked at present day society and we are now submitting to you a new view of a future Ireland where gender equality is the norm". They have set out a vision of how we can achieve gender equality, based on their considerations, and it is now the responsibility of Members of the Oireachtas to consider and respond to those recommendations. Policy to promote gender equality in Ireland is a key component of the work of my Department. The national strategy for women and girls provides a framework for the whole-of-government approach to gender equality. That strategy was brought to a close this year, having been extended by a year in response to the impact of Covid-19, and work will begin to identify the future strategic path for gender equality in 2022.

I want to move to address some of the recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly on Gender Equality, in particular those which fall under my responsibility. The Citizens' Assembly on Gender Equality makes three recommendations for amendment to the Constitution. The first is to amend Article 40.1o of the Constitution to refer explicitly to gender equality and non-discrimination. The second is to amend Article 41o of the Constitution so that it would protect private and family life, with the protection afforded to the family not limited to the marital family. The third is to delete Article 41.2o of the Constitution and replace it with language that is not gender specific and obliges the State to take reasonable measures to support care within the home and across the wider community. These three recommendations propose significant amendments to the Constitution and will require careful consideration for their legal and policy implications. Across the House, I think we can agree there is language in the Constitution which does not reflect the country Ireland is today.

The recommendations do not contain specific language proposals and this will form part of what the Government must have regard to. This is not an easy task and it will take time. I am mindful that consideration of the question of Article 41.2o under the previous Government did not identify language which could be used as a replacement clause to reflect the importance of care work in society. However, my officials are working with the Department of An Taoiseach to find a way forward. I am particularly interested to hear the views of Deputies in this debate on what would be suitable language to use in the Constitution to recognise the importance of care in the home but move away from the very gendered language contained in Article 41.2o.

The Citizens' Assembly on Gender Equality also makes a range of specific recommendations under the broad heading of care, some of which fall under the remit of my Department. There are specific recommendations made on paid leave for parents. The provision of family leave has gone through many advancements in recent years, with the extension of unpaid parental leave and the introduction of paid parent's leave since providing flexibility and support to working parents trying to balance work and the important work of caring for their children. Earlier this year I brought forward the Family Leave and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2021, which further extended parent's leave to five weeks for each parent of a child under the age of two. This leave is available to the parent of a child and their spouse or cohabitant to reflect the complexity of family life in Ireland. As announced in last week's budget, this leave will be extended to seven weeks for each parent from mid-2022. I look forward to implementing those provisions next July. The consequent benefit payment will also be extended for up to seven weeks.

These developments provide a significant amount of leave available to families to care for their child in his or her earliest months and the provisions of the EU work-life balance directive require nine weeks of paid non-transferable leave for each parent by August 2024, the provision of which will be considered in the context of the citizens' assembly recommendations.

Other recommendations focus on early learning and childcare and I recognise the provision of affordable, accessible and quality early learning and childcare services is a very important measure in addressing gender equality. Women are still overwhelmingly responsible for childcare, whether looking after their children themselves at home, organising childcare or working in the early learning and childcare sector. We need to reduce this burden on mothers by making it easier for families to access affordable, quality early learning and childcare which meets their needs. We also need to encourage parents to share responsibility for this care. Recent developments regarding family leave, including paternity leave, parent's leave and parental leave will go way some way to address this, and so too will recent and planned developments in early learning and childcare.

The citizens' assembly has made a number of significant recommendations on this area. These are to move to a publicly funded, accessible and regulated model of quality, affordable early years and out-of-hours childcare over the next decade; to increase the State share of GDP spent on childcare, from the current 0.37% of GDP to at least 1% by no later than 2030 in line with the UNICEF target; and to address the specific needs of lone parents to incentivise and support them in accessing work or education, including provision of child and after-school care.

I agree with the assembly's recommendation that we need to take further steps towards a publicly funded, accessible and regulated model of quality, affordable early years and out-of-hours childcare over the next decade. We also need to increase State investment. We need to address the specific needs of lone parents. Work is under way in my Department to do just that. First 5, the whole-of-government strategy for babies, young children and their families, commits to doubling investment in early learning and childcare over the period 2019 to 2028 so that by 2028 investment in the sector will reach some €1 billion per year.

This strategy also commits to developing a new funding model which will be the key vehicle to ensure this additional investment delivers for children, families and the State. An independently chaired expert group was convened in 2019 to lead on this work. The work of the group is informed by a significant programme of research, delivered by a research partner, Frontier Economics.

The expert group has also undertaken extensive consultation and engagement with stakeholders.

The report reflects the two years of detailed planning, consultation and research that is being finalised and will be submitted in November and it informed my approach to budget 2022. Budget 2022 has been recognised by advocates in the early learning and childcare sector as historic and a step change for the sector. Funding for early learning and childcare in 2022 will increase next year by €78 million to a total of €716 million. This funding will allow my Department to continue: the implementation of the universal early childhood care and education, ECCE, programme for more than 100,000 children for the two years before they begin primary school; the implementation of the access and inclusion model programme of supports that enable more than 5,000 children with a disability participate in the ECCE programme; and the implementation of the national childcare scheme, NCS, which delivers universal and targeted subsidies to up to 80,000 children in line with their income and other circumstances.

Critically, the additional investment next year will also allow my Department to extend the NCS universal subsidy of up to €1,170 per child per annum to all children under 15 from September 2022, benefiting up to 40,000 children. It will remove the practice of deducting hours spent in preschool or school from the entitlement to NCS-subsidised hours, benefiting an estimated 5,000 children from low income families, which is an issue we have regularly discussed in this Chamber and that was a change I was pleased to introduce. It will also introduce a new funding stream with an estimated total cost of €69 million in September 2022 with a full year cost of over €200 million for approximately 4,700 early learning and childcare providers. Providers will be eligible for this new funding stream to help cover increased operating costs linked to quality improvement measures. This additional funding will support early learning and childcare providers to attract and retain staff, including degree-qualified staff, and will support the programme for Government commitment to support the drawing up of an employment regulation order for up to 30,000 staff in the sector. In return for this investment a commitment will be sought from providers not to increase parents' fees. For the first time, next year the State will have some control over fees charged to parents by childcare providers.

Budget 2022 will also allow for further enhancements to regulatory and quality supports for the implementation of the national action plan for childminding, a new workforce development plan and the registration and inspection system for the quality of early learning and childcare. First 5 commitments chime with the recommendations of the Citizen's Assembly and progress made on implementing First 5 is significant. Budget 2022 marks the beginning of a transformative multi-annual investment programme for the early learning and childcare sector, making significant progress on the First 5 commitment to increase spending to €1 billion per year by 2028 and on efforts to improve access, affordability and quality of provision.

The Citizen's Assembly on Gender Equality also makes important recommendations on encouraging women in leadership, including the use of quotas. It is central to ensuring that our society responds to the challenges of gender equality and that women are encouraged and supported in joining political life and in engaging in leadership. Targets are a feature of some ongoing existing gender equality measures, including the provisions of the Electoral (Amendment) (Political Funding) Act 2012, which link the State funding of political parties in the Electoral Acts to the achievement of a gender balance in candidate selection for Dáil general elections. To receive full State funding under the Electoral Acts, a qualified political party had to have at least 30% women candidates and at least 30% men candidates at the election. The legislation provides that this quota will rise to 40% in 2023, seven years after the February 2016 general election.

The Government's long-standing target of 40% gender balance on State boards has had some success, having been met by approximately half of such boards, while the average representation of women among board members is over 40%. In business leadership, the Balance for Better Business review group is an independent business-led review group established by the Government to improve gender balance in senior business leadership in Ireland. Balance for Better Business has set actionable and progressive targets for companies listed on Euronext Dublin and for private companies in Ireland to encourage them to address the gender balance issue on their boards and leadership teams as a matter of priority. The latest data from Balance for Better Business in March 2021 show that the number of women on the boards of Ireland's top 20 listed companies has reached 30%, up from just 18% when the initiative was launched in 2018. Revised targets in its third report, to be achieved by the end of 2023, include a target of 33% of female representation on boards of ISEQ 20 listed companies and 25% for other listed companies. Targets of 30% female representation on boards of large Irish-owned private companies and 35% for leadership teams have also been set.

The Citizen's Assembly also makes a series of recommendations around gender equality in pay and in the workplace. Gender equality in the workplace, particularly in pay, is also a feature of the national strategy for women and girls. Earlier this year the Oireachtas passed the Gender Pay Gap Information Act 2021, which will introduce gender pay gap reporting for the first time. This is one of the recommendations of the Citizen's Assembly on Gender Equality. I look forward to bringing forward regulations on this by the end of this year and to a structure to permit reporting beginning in the coming year. Having this information available to us about some of our largest employers will enable us to identify where the gender pay gap is most significant and will direct focused efforts to address the gender pay gap across different industries. It will also be a positive to employers, with those that can demonstrate gender pay equality within their organisations likely to be more attractive to prospective employees.

The recommendations of the Citizen's Assembly on the gender equality principle in law and policy are particularly pertinent to the work of my Department. The equality and gender equality policy unit leads on the co-ordination of gender equality policy across Government, including leading the national strategy for women and girls, and developing initiatives to address gender equality. As the national strategy for women and girls will conclude this year, my Department will lead on examining and developing a successor cross-Government strategic policy on gender equality. In developing a strategic approach it is vital that we can measure the extent of inequality and how well our initiatives are working.

The importance of gathering and being able to disaggregate data on the equality grounds is recognised in the national strategy for women and girls and it requires all Departments to identify knowledge gaps on gender inequality and use this as a basis to drive improvements in the data infrastructure and analysis required to close those gaps. That lack of data is as pertinent in areas to do with race, disability and other areas where there is discrimination as it is in the area of gender. The anti-racism committee is bringing forward similar recommendations on the need for greater availability of data on race and that is something the Department will be bringing forward.

In line with an OECD recommendation to develop an equality data strategy, the Central Statistics Office, CSO, completed a data audit, in co-operation with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, to ascertain the availability of public service data that is disaggregated by equality dimensions. A report on this audit was published in October 2020 and my officials are examining the possibility of developing a equality data strategy with the CSO. Gender budgeting across Government is being developed under the leadership of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and some 12 Departments are reporting equality budgeting metrics. Earlier this year the Government agreed to the establishment of an interdepartmental group for equality budgeting to facilitate the embedding of the initiative across all Government Departments. This group will play a key role in guiding the continued progress of equality budgeting.

I note also the specific recommendations on equality legislation and these are timely in the context of the review of the Equal Status Acts, which has begun in my Department. At the request of a number of NGOs we have extended the time period for public consultation on the review of equality legislation but that is a significant initiative that the Department is taking on. Our equality legislation has served us well but it is 20 years since it was originally introduced and now is the right time to ensure it is fit for purpose, to examine the nine grounds and to consider additional grounds. We have made specific recommendations in the context of the gender ground as well.

I would like to again thank the members of the Citizen's Assembly for taking the time at a difficult period during Covid-19 to give such in-depth consideration to the issues that came before them.

I thank the chair of the assembly, Dr. Catherine Day, for steering it through and delivering to the Oireachtas 45 important recommendations. Some of these are at the level of constitutional amendments and we must bring parties together to consider what is the best language to use in our Constitution to reflect these ideals. Some measures are being progressed in my Department. Where others are concerned, we will outline how we will progress them in my Department as well as across other Departments.

I will reference a line of the open letter sent by the members of the assembly to us in the Oireachtas. It reads: "We urge you to match our commitment by accepting our recommendations and implementing them without delay to deliver gender equality for Ireland." This is a challenge to all of us, and one that the Government and my Department are up to tackling. I look forward to working with Deputies across the Chamber in implementing the recommendations.

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