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

I am glad to see the Taoiseach's Department is bringing down the gender pay gap, which is good. However, an 11.2% average nationally is still not good enough.

Women earning less than men in comparable jobs is something that should be confined to the history books and should not be the current situation in the 21st century. It is also worth noting that there is a gender pension gap and that the Joint Committee on Social Protection heard that women retire earning 35% less than their male counterparts. The proposed auto-enrolment plan will do nothing to address this point. Here is an issue that has an impact into retirement and beyond working lives and about which the Government could do something by bringing in social protection measures to address this income gap.

It is not a mystery or unexplained why it is that women suffer lower pay than men. It is overwhelmingly because they are employed in professions and sectors that involve child-rearing duties or teaching, and this impacts on how and where they can work. With the general relegation of caring, nursing and teaching and in the sorts of professions in society, in hospitality and in retail that are often dominated by women, we find high levels of precarious work and low levels of pay. While we welcome the statutory rule that employers must report the gap, we need much more than reporting to address this issue.

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