Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy McHugh. I am very glad to have the opportunity to speak on this really important Bill. I congratulate my colleague, Deputy Higgins, on the extraordinary work she has put into developing this comprehensive legislation. It is technically astute and deeply researched. That effort has not just been in the legislative sense; there has been a great deal of associated work, including the comparative international analysis she undertook and the deep discussion she has had with women's representative groups, business representative groups and the many allies outside this House who are trying to reach for a more equal society, particularly in business. I congratulate her on her extraordinary effort in this regard. It is very satisfying to see the Government putting its weight behind the Bill. It is really satisfying to see Deputy Higgins is ahead of the EU in respect of its agreement. The EU provisions were proposed back in 2012 but it is she who has produced the legislation. Congratulations to her. It is a pleasure to be able to speak on her proposals.

I am also very pleased to see so many male colleagues in the Chamber to support the Deputy and her important work. There is no point in groups that have been marginalised, whether women - although they are not a minority, they have been marginalised - or any other group, having to fight alone to rectify their situation. They absolutely need allies at every turn. Even though this is a representative House, there is a gender imbalance in its membership. It is very important that male Deputies continue to turn up, as they have done tonight, in support of gender equality measures.

I pay particular regard to Deputy Richmond, who correctly referred to the achievements of the Irish women's hockey team. He did so without mentioning that he was the person in the Members' bar the other day advocating for the World Cup game to be put on the television. I did not know it was on, but the Deputy did know it was on, knew the significance of it and sought to have it shown. To me, that is a day-to-day example of standing up for Irish women and Irish women's sport. It is an example of walking the walk instead of just coming in here and talking about it.

The trouble is that it is very tiresome to have to keep pointing out the very different historical experiences of men and women and, indeed, their very different contemporary experiences. It is so very tiresome to have to keep putting on the great big boots, as Deputy Higgins has had to do today, in order to take the great big steps we need to take to deal with decades of inequality. It is tiresome to have to point out the reasons it is important to do so and to have to step around our efforts not to apologise for it. The Deputy very carefully and articulately made the point today that she does not need to apologise for making these proposals and for saying that, of course, positions must be given on merit but the background experience is X. It is tiresome to have to point that out continually. I hope we get to a point where we overcome the decades of experience that is built upon one male name after another on boardroom walls and one male photograph after another in company C-suites. The soft cultural effect of that is very excluding. It may not be intimidating but it is excluding because its speaks to a past where only men succeeded, only men were capable of writing books and only men were scientists, historians and political leaders, as though women never had the capacity to do those things. Of course they had the capacity - they were just too busy dying in childbirth or rearing the children they birthed to be able to participate - if there had been the opportunity for them to be educated and to participate. We are seeking to address those decades and centuries of exclusion and a situation whereby one can point only to male authorities in every academic subject, when so many women were so capable. The idea that this imbalance is somehow not directly replicated in business, politics or any other aspect of society is just a fallacy. There is absolutely no need to apologise for the fact we now have to put on great big boots to step over those decades of historical inequality.

It is not difficult for women to identify the barriers Deputy Bruton identified. They are soft and cultural but they are a day-to-day occurrence and they are real. I will give a few examples. I have two friends who are both partners in law firms. One of them is the first female equity law partner in her firm and is very capable and experienced. She is also a single mother. She has to work twice as hard to be able to turn up and do her job, without anybody really taking account of that. During the recruitment process, she asked why she was the first female equity partner. She was told that no women had previously indicated an interest in the role. That is just not possible. It is just not true. It cannot be possible, in a situation where women make up 50% of university law students and more than 50% of graduates of the Law Society of Ireland, King's Inns and other places, that none of them is interested in being an equity partner.

What are the cultural things that are happening in between those two points? The answers are childbirth, child rearing, a differential treatment of men and women in terms of expectations in regard to caring duties and a different treatment of men and women when it comes to the provision of flexible working. I recall another situation involving a very experienced professional friend of mine who was working in a professional services accountancy firm. When she and her partner had a second baby, she looked to move from a five-day week to a three-day week. I urged her not to, pointing to the effect on her pension, promotional opportunities and inclusion. The obvious solution, of course, was that she and her partner should both move to a four-day week. However, it was simply not culturally possible for that to be accommodated in a senior commercial organisation in Dublin, or anywhere else in the country for that matter. Until it is culturally normal for a man in a senior commercial position to tell his manager that he and his partner have just had a second baby and he would like to do a four-day week for the next three years, nothing will change.

The only way for that to become normal is to have women at boardroom and executive level right across the board in order that their experience becomes normal and their seniority, having had that experience, is normal. The only way to achieve this is to introduce legislation along the lines of Deputy Higgins's Bill. I have one caveat, which is that there is no point in its provisions being limited to non-executive directors. All of the power, money and influence, including cultural influence, is at executive director level. That is the level we must target. It is not acceptable that the provisions should apply only to non-executive positions. Deputy Higgins may leave this House in 30 years after a marvellous career and get a non-executive position. It is not enough.

Her appropriate comparator is someone in an organisation now, and that person should be someone who is in an executive position running the organisation. She sets the tone in this regard.

This is about the soft cultural experience of having things explained to you, of having your own expertise explained to you. Deputy Higgins has her expertise and her own professional background, and I have mine. At least twice in recent months I have had pieces of my own academic writing explained to me by people who then admitted they had not read the material. It is so annoying, but it happens all the time and it only ever happens in the context of a male communicating with a female. It sounds like a sort of contentious and contrary point to make, but honest to God it happens, and if it happens here, and I am sure Deputy Higgins would nod in agreement with this, then it happens in every other organisation as well. It is one of the points every women's organisation highlights as being significant. I congratulate Deputy Higgins and thank her for her work today and, indeed, for the work that has gone into this legislation over the past two years.

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