Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for clarifying his intentions on the Government Bill and, as he stated, we are seeking to be constructive. Everybody is in agreement on where we wish to be. We all wish to see pay transparency legislation introduced and to tackle the ongoing gender pay gap. However, it has been nearly a year since the Bill before the House passed Committee Stage. The Minister of State clarified that the scheme of the Government's Bill is with the Joint Committee on Justice and Equality and that the latter will hopefully commence pre-legislative scrutiny in late November, but I still say that it would have been speedier to have simply amended this Bill. There is a record of the Government extensively amending Private Members' Bills in this House. I refer, for example, to the Competition (Amendment) Act 2017, which, with extensive amendment by Government, was passed by the Houses in the aftermath of collaboration between the Labour Party and officials in the relevant Department. The same could have been done in this instance.

That said, I am grateful to the Minister of State for his engagement on this. I met with him and his officials during the summer months. At that point, he spoke to me about the proposal to use the Workplace Relations Commission and not to have IHREC as the body collecting the data and we were in agreement with him on accepting amendments to that effect. I appreciate that IHREC would have required significant extra resources to be in a position to collect the data. It probably would not have been appropriate and I accepted that. I still have a slight concern about the scheme as proposed by Government in terms of enforcement. I expressed that concern to the Minister of State and his officials.The Minister of State's Bill proposes to amend the employment equality legislation and would not give power of enforcement to IHREC. Given the commission has powers to conduct equality reviews and audits under the existing legislation, it would be a missed opportunity not to give it similar powers in respect of gender pay gaps. It seems strange not to give those powers to the commission in this case. It is uncontroversial, of course, as the EU Commission and many other bodies are seeking gender pay gap legislation. It is important that this be done. It would have been nice to have it done in the year of Vótáil 100 and the centenary of women's suffrage, to which Senator Ó Ríordáin referred. It is a pity because this could have been done more swiftly. There has been extensive consultation. The Minister of State's Department engaged in extensive consultation with stakeholders. All of this needs to be said. Having said all of this, if the Minister of State's Bill is introduced before this legislation proceeds through the Dáil, I hope it will be introduced in the Seanad given we have had extensive debates. Many colleagues on both sides of the House-----