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

I apologise that I was not in the Chamber when discussions commenced. I thank both Deputies for bringing forward this Private Member's Bill, which the Government will not be opposing on Second Stage. As the Deputies said, discrimination at any stage of employment is unacceptable and the proposed amendment today to the Employment Equality Act would prohibit advertising a position without including an approximate remuneration. I appreciate the work that has gone into this Bill and commend the Deputies on highlighting an important issue on bringing forward such an important issue on pay transparency and equality. Pay transparency is an important part of employment equality and ensures that regardless of who is applying for a job, they are adequately remunerated in the event they are successful in attaining that position. By including approximate remunerations in job advertisements, employers would be taking another step towards creating a more equal working society in Ireland by incorporating equality measures throughout every step of the employment process. There are many benefits to pay transparency for both employers and employees. For employers, pay transparency helps to attract and retain top talent and can be a competitive advantage on the job advertisement market. Transparent communication about remuneration builds trust from the outset between the employer and prospective employee. For employees, on the other hand, pay transparency helps to close gaps and ensure, as a society, we are making progress towards achieving pay equity.

As the Deputies will be aware, the issue of pay transparency is also being considered as part of a proposed EU directive. In March 2021, the European Commission published proposals for binding pay transparency measures. Pay transparency measures are intended to complement and support Directive 2006/54/EC, or the gender recast directive, to help address the gender pay and pension gaps in the EU. In terms of where the draft EU directive on pay transparency is right now, my understanding is that European Parliament adopted its negotiating position on the proposal in April 2022 with a view to informal trilogue negotiations with the Council. The Council position was agreed in trilogue negotiations in December last year and the Czech Presidency wrote to the European Parliament at the time seeking its agreement. The political agreement was reached by the European Parliament and the Council and is now subject to their formal co-legislator process. Once agreed, the directive will enter into force 20 days after publication in the official journal. Member states will then need to transpose new elements of the directive into national law within three years. I have gone into the weeds a little, but it is important to realise that there is a big piece of European law coming down the tracks. Ireland will have to implement that, which is why I was open to not opposing this Bill today because we can look at this Bill and at the Bill Senators brought forward in Seanad Éireann on Tuesday. We can look at both in the context of bringing forward the implementation and transposition of the pay transparency directive into domestic law.

The directive looks at a number of issues, including pay transparency for jobseekers, which is an issue the Deputies addressed in their proposal today. It discusses the broader right of information for employees. It deals with the issue of the gender pay gap, an issue we have already legislated on. I will speak more about that in a moment. It also looks at the issue of joint pay assessments. It is quite a wide piece of legislation. We will be required to introduce legislation in Ireland to transpose certain elements of it. When we are working on that, some of the ideas coming from this legislation and the legislation discussed in the Seanad will be valuable as part of this process.

It is important to note that in Ireland we have taken important steps in terms of equality in the workplace. The one I am most familiar with, having brought it through the Houses, is the Gender Pay Gap Information Act 2021. We have just gone through the first reporting cycle. Employers with more than 250 employees reported on their gender pay gap earlier this year. In my Department, there is a gender pay gap in favour of women. We are the only Department in which the gender pay gap is positive towards women. It recognises the significant number of women in high-level positions in the Department. It is a useful tool to force companies, in a way, to reflect on their pay policies and to make them bring forward proposals on how they will address the gender pay gap. It is not just about the information; it is also about the requirement that they have to set out what they are going to do to address it. As the Deputies know, it was originally for employers with more than 250 employees but that will come down to employers with more than 150 and eventually down to employers with more than 50 employees. That goes much lower than what is contained in the pay transparency directive, which I think stays at more than 100 employees. It will have deeper coverage here.

To take a step back about why we are undertaking all of this work, advancing socioeconomic equality for women and girls was a high-level priority of the National Strategy for Women and Girls and contributes to advancing women’s full participation in employment and public life. Furthering equality measures through the advertising of remuneration would mean that from the outset of job advertisements, workers will be in a stronger position to negotiate and demand fair pay because they have access to adequate information. Ensuring that all rates of pay are transparent will strengthen our ability to prevent discrimination and empowers those who currently have little recourse in challenging discrimination that may occur.

I think we can all agree that it is unacceptable to discriminate against people in terms of equal pay for equal work. The Employment Equality Acts 1998 to 2021 provide in domestic legislation for equal pay for equal work or work of equal value for men and women and the Department remains committed to ensuring that our equality legislation is kept up to date. That is why, as Minister, I commissioned a review of existing equality legislation. There was a successful public consultation on that last year. My Department will be publishing the report on that public consultation, summarising the key issues raised in the next few weeks. That report will feed into drawing up the heads of the Bill for amendment to the Employment Equality Acts. I hope that by the autumn term, we will be in a position to bring those amendments to the House. That is another key element in the ongoing work. There is good employment equality legislation in this country but it originates from 1998 and now is a good time to look at it as a whole and bring the changes we need forward. In this Chamber, we discussed only a few weeks ago the issue of adding a new ground of discrimination based on socioeconomic status, which I feel strongly about.

I thank the Deputies for bringing forward this Bill today. I look forward to examining it in more detail.

The work the Government will do in response to the Bill will also be understood in terms of our wider response to the EU gender pay directive. I said the same thing to the Government Senators in the Seanad on Tuesday. This Bill is an important contribution to the debate and I welcome the opportunity to discuss it.

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