Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, is welcome to the Chamber. I am delighted that we are finally debating Second Stage of this Bill today. It has been a while coming. I pay tribute in particular to my colleague, Senator Bacik, who introduced legislation in this space four years ago.

I wish to make two main comments about the Bill. The first is how important it is to understand the enormity of the gender pay gap and that there is no single bullet. I am heartened to hear all the comments today. The Bill is just one tool in reducing the gender pay gap. The Minister has heard me talk about the need for collective bargaining. The right to be recognised for collective bargaining purposes for both men and women is probably the single greatest tool for closing the gender pay gap. There have been many references to the 14% hourly pay gap. I get very frustrated when people talk about such a pay gap. How many of us ever think in terms of how much we are paid per hour? What does the pay per hour ever tell us about our ability to pay bills, our standard of living or the quality of people's work? What people get paid per week or per month is what is important. In 2019 the Central Statistics Office, CSO, earnings data based on administrative data sources told us that the gap between women and men in the labour force is more than 25%. When we look at those in retirement, the gap is even greater at 28.6%. We must look at the pay per hour, but we must also look at the hours per week. We know that 30% of all women in employment in this country are in part-time employment compared with 11% of men, so it is the weekly pay gap that we need to address.

The second point focuses on my concerns about the Bill. While I am delighted that we are discussing the Bill, I am concerned about its lack of ambition. I appeal to the Minister to get this right now, as opposed to waiting five years for the review to try and address some of the shortcomings as I see them in the existing Bill. The first relates to the number of workers who will be covered. What was the evidential basis for deciding on workplaces with 50 or more workers and that the legislation would start with workplaces of 250 or more workers? The pace of introduction is incredibly slow. Workplaces with more than 50 workers would only cover 57% of all employees in this country. It would cover less than 2% of all workplaces. How can we expect to make any dent on the gender pay gap if nearly half of all workers in this country will be unaffected by this legislation?

My second concern relates to the failure to compare full-time and part-time workers. It has been eloquently articulated by many speakers today that those who are in a part-time work trap have greater difficulty in accessing pay progression in terms of career progression. Working part time has a significant and real impact on women and men, but women in particular, as there is a greater share of women in part-time employment and therefore on their capacity to progress in the workplace. We must compare full-time workers with part-time workers.

The third point I wish to make is how some of the criteria stipulated in the Bill, in particular regarding temporary work and the share of female workers per quartile across a company, are different to the treatment set out in section 2, which looks at the median, mean, bonuses and other criteria between men and women. We must be as ambitious as possible for this legislation. Let us get it right now. We will submit a number of amendments which I look forward to tabling before next Monday.