Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House and thank him for coming in to take this issue. The matter I raise on the Commencement is the need for the Taoiseach to outline the numbers by gender breakdown of those employ in small, medium and large businesses, respectively. I have been asked by the National Women's Council to raise this issue. I first tabled it as a Commencement matter to the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation in the belief that it was a matter for her Department. I was advised, however, that it is a matter for the Central Statistics Office, which falls within the remit of the Department of the Taoiseach. I have certainly learned from this experience.

I raise the matter in the context of forthcoming legislation on pay transparency. Put simply, the Bill in question will address the ongoing gender pay gap. Women in Ireland still earn on average 14% less than men. We marked the day this year when women effectively stop earning, as compared with their male colleagues, on Tuesday of this week. It is known as gender pay gap day. This issue applies broadly, not only in Ireland, and European Union gender pay gap day was marked last Saturday, the EU pay gap being even wider than Ireland's. It is an issue we have to address and measures to address it have been adopted in other countries. These include gender pay gap wage transparency legislation, which requires companies to publish data on an anonymised basis about the gender breakdown of employees and the pay rates of those employees. I introduced a gender pay gap Bill in the Oireachtas, which passed all Stages in the Seanad in October 2018. The Government has made proposals for similar legislation but so far has only published heads of a Bill.I have certainly expressed concern, as have my Labour Party colleagues, that if the Government had been minded to adopt our Bill, that could have become law much more swiftly and we would have been able to see greater change for women more swiftly. The issue here is the effect in practice of the Government legislation, as opposed to our legislation because our legislation proposed that it would apply to all companies employing more than 50 employees. Thus far, the Government heads of Bill suggest it will initially only apply the legislation to companies with 250 or more staff and then, on a phased basis, move to companies employing 50 or more staff. I have spoken at various different events on equal pay and have been told that women tend to be over-represented or represented to a greater degree in small and medium enterprises. That is certainly the case in the British statistics and I would like to know if it is the case in Ireland. If so, the Government legislation is much less likely to have the same immediate impact on women in employment as our legislation would have given that the latter envisages immediate application to companies employing 50 or more staff, rather than having to wait for a period of time.

I spoke recently at an event in the arts centre about our gender pay gap Bill and was told that very few arts organisations employ more than 50 people. This is a sector where women are well represented. Therefore, the likelihood is that even our legislation would not have any immediate impact on women in the arts because so few arts organisations employ 50 staff. We must be realistic but it would be very helpful for us in drafting and bringing forward legislation, be it the Government Bill or our Bill, to know the gender breakdown of employees of small businesses as opposed to medium and large businesses. That is the context in which I raise this issue. I understand the information has been sought from the Central Statistics Office previously but it was not forthcoming or readily available, hence my raising of this Commencement matter. I thank the Minister of State again for taking it.