Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The gender pay gap in respect of pensions was constantly brought up at my clinics during the summer. According to a recent report from the Economic and Social Research Institute, an Irish woman's weekly income is €153 less than that of an Irish man in retirement. The report found that women were less likely to receive a contributory pension than men and that, among those who did, their average income was much lower than the average income received by men, while taking years out to look after children meant a reduction in contributory pension and this has affected women disproportionately. They have generally worked for fewer years at retirement and this means they have also had less time to build up a private pension. According to the report, over 90% of retired men had worked for more than 30 years compared with just 33% of retired women. We need to look at how the contributory pension is allocated. We were worth nothing for all the years of raising this generation and, for the benefit of that same generation, we now need to look at policies to enable a greater contribution in the workforce by women. Policies which enable greater continuity in employment and encourage fewer gender traps are called for now. We need to examine our policies to create more affordable childcare and long-term care services and to ensure those policies are robust enough to enable women to stay in the workforce.

The report underlines how the Government's plans to look at private pensions as the saviour will do nothing to address the pay gap, because the numbers will stay the same. Women are more likely to earn less and have less secure employment, meaning they cannot build a private pension in the same way men can. It is high time we valued the work women do in raising families in their homes. We in Fianna Fáil are working hard to increase the home carer tax credit, but this measure is not enough of an acknowledgement of the savings delivered to the State by the women who stay at home to raise families. While some dads do this, the majority are women.