Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein)
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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.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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I want to acknowledge the work of my colleague, Deputy Daly, and Lee Daly in his office, on this Bill. The more transparency around wages the better for all workers as it can help to ensure a fair deal from employers. Pay transparency is also an important tool for tackling the gender pay gap and other forms of pay related discrimination. Progress has been made in the area of pay transparency but more still needs to be done and some of those reasons and the measurements that have been done were outlined by Deputy Daly in his contribution.

This Bill seeks to ensure pay transparency for roles advertised for businesses and public sector organisations. It relies on the provisions of the Employment Equality Acts 1998 to 2015, specifically section 10, which places an obligation on persons not to publish or display an advert which does not include the pay associated with the job. The Bill amends section 10 of the Employment Equality Act 1998, as amended, to include an obligation to publish the approximate remuneration owed to the worker for taking up a contract of employment. What all this means is that no job adverts, online or anywhere else, can fail to include details on pay. It is straightforward and it is a practical step to make pay more transparent. This legislation is an important step in strengthening the position of workers, specifically in the job application process.

Anyone who has searched for a job, especially online, will be familiar with scrolling down and finding where one expects to see a salary instead of phrases such as "depending on experience" or "competitive salary". It is disheartening and the process of applying for jobs can be a gruelling task with many steps to the application. All workers should be able to see in advance what pay or pay range, based on experience, is being offered. This allows people to make an informed decision on whether or not to apply. Workers already employed by the company or in the same sector should be able to see the pay being advertised to new recruits.

All workers stand to benefit from this common-sense change to employment law. However, as was said, this change will particularly help women and minorities to ensure they are being offered the same remuneration at the end of the application process as any other candidate. This Bill will also level the playing field for companies that already provide this level of transparency on pay and it should be noted that most good employers include details on pay. The legislation is making sure that all employers are obliged to follow suit. The truth is that the lack of transparency and asymmetrical information reduces the bargaining power of the applicant and skews the power in favour of the employer. Knowing the salary up front lets a candidate understand whether a job would be financially viable for him or her before committing the time and effort to applying. It shows workers already in the job what salaries are being offered to attract new employees. Leaving the employer to negotiate with the successful candidate on salary after the fact can lead to women, particularly people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and minorities often ending up on lower salaries, and there is evidence to back that up.

An increasing body of research shows that salary transparency is a way of creating more equitable workplaces.

In the third level sector in particular, the working conditions for tutors, lecturers and researchers have been eroded by the employment practices of underfunded colleges. It disproportionately affects women, as was said. There is a particular problem in this country with the labour force and labour force planning. All of the research tells us particularly that women with school-aged children and lone mothers are exiting the workplace because of discrepancies and unfairness within employment and employment conditions. Decisions around women working full-time, part-time or not working outside the home are impacted by all of this. A knock-on effect of this legislation, we hope, although an awful lot needs to be done, is that it will in some way address that issue for mothers of school-aged children. The Bill will contribute to the transparency and fairness of that. It will also impact social welfare top-ups. This Bill should help to reduce instances where working family payments have to be made. It is better for society, individuals and families. It is a simple Bill that will fix a growing problem.

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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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.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Deputies Daly and Conway-Walsh for bringing the Bill before the House. If enacted, it would bring transparency to the area of pay in job advertisements. This has always been a glaring omission in job advertisements. People looking at the advertisement for a particular position they are interested in, and which they feel might suit them, never see a reference to the rate of pay. This immediately puts people on the back foot. They are unsure of what is going on, what they can apply for and whether it would suit. It creates an immediate dynamic between the employer and a job applicant in which the employer holds all the cards. When applicants sit across from them at the table the employers can decide what rate of pay they will give them at any given time. Applicants have always remained uncertain about the benefits of the job for which they are applying. They are likely to have to provide personal and, at times, very revealing information at interview stage. Their ability to negotiate and demand fair play is diminished. In turn, this can put people off applying for a particular position. This has also led to applicants anticipating a rate of pay, especially if they are coming into the city from the country and are trying to figure out whether a job would pay enough to rent somewhere in the city or whether they should travel up and down. Phrases such as "competitive salary" mean little or nothing in the grand scheme of things. It is a pointless phrase that gives an impression of a positive rate being on offer without any commitment to one.

This habit of advertising jobs without explicit rates of pay being displayed, or rates of pay being substituted with a leading or misleading phrase, has opened the door to a range of trouble and possibilities with regard to equality and gender equality. Hiding the rate of pay enables discrimination. We all know unscrupulous employers and there is no doubt about that. Hiding the rate of pay can enable them to decide that a particular rate of pay will apply to a particular type of person. People who may be members of a minority may be afraid to speak up when the issue of pay is discussed. This can perpetuate the gender pay gap which, sadly, is still evident in certain areas.

Ultimately, the Bill seeks to address these issues by requiring that jobs be advertised with details of the expected salary included. This would empower employees and potential employees. The Bill seeks to get rid of advertisements that are deliberately open to interpretation and guarantee nothing. The Bill is for workers. It is aimed at strengthening their position in the job application process. I welcome it. I also welcome the fact that the Government will not oppose it. We look forward to it going further.

Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)
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This is a very positive Bill. The Deputies in Sinn Féin would be the first to admit that it is also a very modest Bill. This is in no way a criticism. It is modest because it is realistic. It is a short amendment to the existing legislation. It reads "omits the approximate remuneration for a contract of employment". It is very simple and straightforward.

I understand there is other legislation before the Seanad this week which seeks to do something very similar. We know there is a very big conversation internationally about transparency generally. This encompasses transparency in public life, in business and in the areas of climate action, commercial interests and sustainability commitments. There should be the same type of emphasis on transparency about questions of employment and the quality of employment.

The Minister mentioned the important directives being considered by the European Commission and other European institutions. There is another important piece of legislation coming down the tracks from a European perspective, namely, the European minimum wage directive. This will assist us in setting more adequate minimum wages and a living wage in Ireland and throughout the European Union. It will also force states throughout the European Union to do better in terms of the question of decent work. In doing this they will be required to ensure that more workers are covered by collective agreements, sectoral agreements and collective bargaining more generally. It will move to generate greater levels of trade union density. This can only be a good thing in terms of fairer remuneration and more decent working conditions for people throughout the European Union and Ireland.

In Ireland there are questions about the constitutional position of trade unions. We know that people have a right to join a trade union. Unfortunately, it is considered that there is an equal right in the Constitution for an employer not to have to recognise the trade union of choice of the employee. To a point, this is a question that will be resolved by the European directive. I speak about the European directive because it links back to what we are discussing today. The direction of travel is very clear. If we do not do it in advance, Europe will force us to change our employment equality Acts to reflect the type of amendment being proposed by Deputies Daly and Conway-Walsh.

Who can fear transparency? The frank answer is bad employers. We have made this argument consistently. It is only bad employers who would fear this. Good employers would embrace this very progressive idea. Previous speakers mentioned the difficulties that workers face, particularly those in some sectors, in applying for jobs and having reasonable salary expectations only to be thwarted once they are offered a job. The amending Bill proposed today is quite simple. It refers to approximate remuneration. This gets around any objection employers may have about commercial sensitivity or competitiveness within an economic sector. Providing information on approximate remuneration is reasonable. It is reasonable to expect that someone seeking a job or being interviewed for a job would have some clear understanding of what the salary involved would be. Everybody would accept that this is reasonable.

I thank the Minister for the positive way in which he has approached this Bill.

I am struck by something Deputies Conway-Walsh and Daly said earlier in regard to the experience of migrant workers. There is a migrant worker pay gap, and there is no doubt about that. We know that anecdotally but there is also evidence to suggest it is the case and, arguably, that kind of issue would be a matter of concern to the WRC and could come up against issues in the Employment Equality Acts themselves. I do not believe there is a huge amount of case law in that area. It is, of course, always the case that vulnerable workers who are liable to exploitation are less likely than others to take cases for examination to the WRC or to other institutions.

This is about protecting the interests of the most vulnerable workers across our society. It is a good Bill and is one the Labour Party is pleased to support. I recognise and acknowledge the Minister's work in terms of the gender pay gap information legislation, an initiative that was spearheaded by my colleague in the Seanad at the time, Deputy Bacik, who pioneered the concept of this legislation in Ireland. We worked closely with the Minister and his officials to finesse that legislation and, ultimately, we now have that legislation in place, although we have a significant gender pay gap in this country. It is something that needs to be addressed and I know that is something the Minister is committed to. We look forward to working with everybody in this House to move on this particular issue. I again congratulate Deputies Daly and Conway-Walsh for this initiative, which is very welcome.

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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I call the Minister.

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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I think I have addressed the main elements and set out the Government's position.

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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In that case, I call Deputy Daly.

Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Minister for the fact the Bill is unopposed. We are open to working with him and with any of the other Senators who are working on this issue. In my own experience at work, although I did not do very many employment law cases, anyone who came in with a problem in the workplace was not unionised and they had been messed around because there was no backup for them in the workplace. It is important to have small pieces of legislation pushing along in one direction to help them because the system tends to work against them.

I recall that on Kerry County Council, we asked that any contracts that the council undertakes would deal only with unionised workplaces or workplaces that say someone is welcome to have a union in the workplace. I remember that the reply we received came from a firm of solicitors engaged by Kerry County Council. When I looked at the main page of its website, it said “How to hire and fire - an employer’s guide”. That is what an ordinary worker is up against. Hopefully, we can all work together on this small issue to try to push things along. As Deputy Nash said, we can work together so people are not put out in terms of their time and expense, like Mike, who I mentioned at the start, and who travelled up from Kerry at his own time and expense to do a job that could not take place, despite having a young family.