Ivana Bacik (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, to the House and welcome the opportunity to debate Second Stage of this important Bill. I thank the Minister for his kind words of acknowledgement for the work I and my Labour Party colleagues have done over many years to bring forward similar legislation. Indeed, the Bill we brought forward seeking to address the gender pay gap passed Second Stage in this House over four years ago, in May 2017. It passed Committee Stage here in October 2017 with Government and cross-party support and passed Final Stages in October 2018. Indeed, it then went on to pass Second Stage in the Dáil in November 2018. It has been a long journey since then to come back before this House with the Government Bill. While I very much welcome this Bill, I feel it could have been done much more swiftly, and the Minister probably agrees it has been a long time in the making. I thank him for setting out on the journey and for the consultation, and there was a great deal of consultation. However, I should say that over the years since I first introduced our Labour Party Bill in 2017, I have spoken at numerous employer, trade union and human resource management events about the gender pay gap and the introduction of a gender pay gap reporting mechanism. It is clear that employers, unions and public sector bodies across the country are ready and were prepared for this some time ago, given such legislation has been introduced in so many other jurisdictions, and that we have an EU imperative to do so as well. It could have been done more quickly but, that said, I am glad it is before us now. I understand it is to move swiftly through this House and that we will have Committee Stage very soon.

I did not think it would be necessary to say why we need a gender pay gap Bill but it seems there is still some disagreement as to whether a gender pay gap exists and whether legislation is necessary. To remind anyone who needs reminding, the gender pay gap is the term we use to describe the difference between the pay of women and men calculated on an average basis in gross hourly earnings. While it is usually presented as a gross hourly earnings gap, there is, of course, also a weekly and monthly gap. Senator Marie Sherlock has spoken extensively on this aspect and I know she is going to speak on it again today. We know that, on average, women in the EU earn 16% less per hour than men; that is based on European Commission figures from 2018 and those figures show that Ireland had an hourly gender pay gap of 14%. This has meant that, across the EU, we mark equal pay day on 9 November, as colleagues are aware, and this marks the moment when women symbolically stop getting paid when compared to our male colleagues, with so much of the working year still remaining. A similar concept lies behind the idea that at 4 p.m. every day, we stop getting paid when compared to male colleagues.

Clearly, there are many reasons for this. Certainly, women and men have different work patterns, there is a great deal of occupational gender segregation across different employments and different careers, and there is a preponderance of women in lower paid and part-time work. All of us are very aware of these issues and I do not think many of us would accept this is just to do with the choices of individual women. Women and men, as we all know, make choices within circumstances, contexts and structures not of our choosing. If we, as a society, cannot facilitate women who want to work more and want to earn the same amount as our husbands and partners, then we should be setting up the structures and the legislative frameworks to enable women to do that, and to support those women and men who choose to work in that way. That is clearly the impetus behind this Bill, which I very much welcome.

If there was any doubt about this, just three months ago, the Minister was kind enough to come to this House on International Women's Day to respond to a matter I had put down with Senator Sherlock about the gender pay gap. As it happened, just that week a piece had been published in The Sunday Timeson updated gender pay gap figures for RTÉ showing that one in five women working in RTÉ earns less than €40,000 compared to almost one in ten men, so there are twice as many women on that lower pay in one organisation. I do not think any of us believe that organisation is unique. We know from other jurisdictions where gender pay gap transparency legislation has been in place for some time that it can be really effective in addressing the disparity between the earning levels of women and men, for example, in Belgium.

Senator Sherlock will speak about the weekly gap, which we also know to be very extensive. The average weekly earnings for women in this country are 25% less than the average weekly earnings of men, which again is a very stark figure more than 30 years after we introduced equal pay legislation. We know from EUROSTAT figures that this translates into a serious gap in pensions between women and men, so this does not just stop when we finish earning in paid employment because, of course, it has a knock-on effect into pensions. This is a huge issue that requires tackling and, as I said, I very much welcome the fact we will now have legislation.

I want to address three specific areas where I feel the Bill could be strengthened and where it differs significantly from the Labour Party Bill we proposed four years ago. I hope we can address some of these issues further on Committee Stage. I acknowledge the Minister has already brought forward amendments and that he had indicated in March in this House that he was going to bring forward amendments which would strengthen to Bill. I welcome that and I hope we can work constructively to strengthen it further.

I want to outline the three points. First, in terms of organisations to which this Bill will apply, our legislation applied to all employers with more than 50 employees and we modelled that on the powers already in the establishment legislation for the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. We did not see it as necessary to phase in the legislation and given the long gestation period of this Bill, I do not see why it still has this phased basis, starting with 250 employees, despite the fact very few employers in Ireland have such a large number of employees, and it then goes to 150 and only then to 50. There is a concern that it will take a very long time to implement and to apply to most people working. I ask why not phase it in more swiftly or, indeed, go straight to 50 employees.

The second key change is the role of Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, which the Minister has spoken about. We had envisaged a much more extensive role for the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission so that it would actually be the body collating and taking the data. I accept, as I have accepted before in this House, that this might not be the most appropriate mechanism to provide for collation and publication of the data. However, what concerns me is that the current Bill is so vague as to how this will actually be done. Again, given the extensive consultation, I would like to hear more about what exactly is proposed under the proposed new section 20A(5), which simply provides that regulations “may” prescribe the form and manner in which the data will be published, and so on. At this point, we need to know, and employers, workers and unions need to know, how exactly this will be done and what is going to be the key mechanism.

The final point is about enforcement and penalties. Again, I am glad the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission will continue to have a role, as we had envisaged in our own Bill. However, I am concerned about the onus being placed on individuals to go to the Workplace Relations Commission to seek enforcement under the proposed new section 85C. We can explore this further on Committee Stage and Report Stage. What is key is that we look elsewhere and look to jurisdictions that have well-established pay transparency legislation to tackle the gender pay gap and that we seek to ensure the legislation is strong and effective from the start, and that it will, therefore, be effective in reducing this ongoing and glaring gender pay gap.