Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

The progress being made on closing the gender pay gap globally is glacial. At the current rate, it will take 257 years to close this gap fully. In his contribution at the start, the Taoiseach said a gender pay gap in Ireland of 11.2% compared with an EU average of 13% showed this State was doing better. I put it to the Taoiseach that a better way to phrase that would be to say that in this country we are doing less badly than the EU. There should be no pats on the back here. There is a long way to go.

In this country, a key contributor to the gap is the State's grossly inadequate and expensive system of childcare, which forces many women to take a longer break from work than they would like. Whereas in Germany a household spends on average of 1% of its net household income on childcare, and 3% in Austria and 5% in Sweden, in Ireland the equivalent figure is a whopping 28%. The Government is currently putting more money into a childcare system that is run, in large measure, by the private sector.

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