Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

A couple of years ago a good old friend and colleague came to me with a story of her friend, Mike. He had got first class honours as a mature student when he returned to college and a job came up in Dublin, to where he travelled, at his own expense, only to discover when he arrived for the interview that the rates of pay would be far less than he anticipated. We got to work on this, and I would like to thank Lee Daly in my office, and the staff in the Bill's Office for their assistance in moving this Bill forward. I thank the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, as well. I presume this Bill will go on to Committee Stage and I understand that it will receive a favourable response from the Minister. I await the analysis of the Office of Parliamentary Legal Advisers with great interest as the Bill is a simple solution to a real-world problem.

This Bill will amend the Employment Equality Act 1998 to provide for pay transparency in the advertising of jobs. Section 10(1) of the 1998 Act prohibits the advertisement of any job where it indicates an intention to discriminate or might reasonably be understood as indicating such an intention. This Bill will add another ground for prohibition of a job advertisement, that is, the omission of pay scales. The basis of most discrimination is economic in nature and it must be combated with economic solutions which empower people to combat inequality. Minorities and others do not need mere moral support, although that helps. They need real solutions and I hope this Bill is a small contribution towards making that happen.

I am grateful for the engagements which I and my office had with the trade union sector. The Financial Services Union, in particular, was proactive in reaching out and sharing details of its research. According to its research, in 2018 there was a gap of €26,000 between males and females within the financial services, insurance and real estate industries. I am grateful to the Financial Services Union for offering its support and roadmap for action and its gender pay gap report should be examined by Government. Point 1 of this roadmap was to make pay rates transparent so I am glad the Bill will seek to implement this.

In addition to discrimination on the grounds of gender, there are many other reasons this measure is important. An Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, report in January of this year stated that migrant workers are paid as much as 40% less than their Irish counterparts. The problem affects lower paid and manual professions most and for every €1 an Irish worker earned, a non-Irish worker earned 78 cent. Especially disadvantaged were nationals from eastern Europe, Africa and the rest of the world. Some groups fare better than Irish nationals. For example, nationals from EU west, North America, Australia and Oceania, Asia and the UK are more likely to be in professional or managerial occupations. Even if all of these factors are still controlled, migrant workers earn less than their Irish equivalents.

The current labour market is extremely stagnant with many employers refusing to raise wages even as workers enjoy increased options. A rebalancing is needed, even as the employers resist. This is especially the case with young people, who understand and demand pay transparency far more than their older counterparts. They understand that they are at risk of being left behind without it and businesses should recognise the competitive advantage that pay transparency gives them. I see that Government Senators may also be moving a Bill on this issue. I briefed the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, about this Bill late last year and I await his response today. He was minded to await the EU proposals on the matter so the issue seems to now be more about the timeline and means of implementation.

I will yield the rest of my time to Deputy Conway-Walsh, who co-sponsors the Bill, but I want to acknowledge that in dealing with workers in recent years, workers’ rights are a serious issue. Only today I spoke to one of the Tralee Debenhams workers. These Debenhams workers have recently received, along with their colleagues across the country, a human rights award from the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, ICCL, for their work in standing up for workers' rights. I would like to commend them for their bravery in ensuring that stock was not removed from Debenhams stores without them receiving what was rightfully theirs for their many years of service. The Clerys workers have been waiting for eight years and the Debenhams workers have been waiting for nearly three years now. Retail is a sector which is particularly prone to pay issues with zero-hour contracts, precarious employment, and other measures used to squeeze workers.

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