Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. There is always a balance to be identified between an agenda to remove what are objectively obstacles to people's equal participation in society and the economy, which one must always support, and where this drifts into the area of social engineering, which I have an issue with, when we start to tell people and families how to live and arrange their lives, identifying some choices as virtuous and others as less virtuous. I tend to oppose that. I approached this legislation with that tension in mind. I note that this Bill passed the Dáil without a single Deputy opposing it on Second Stage. Not a single amendment was submitted on Committee Stage at the select committee and Committee Stage was wrapped up within an hour. This is for a Bill that languished on the Dáil Order Paper for almost two years before being resurrected two weeks ago. There was not a single vote against it on its final passage through the Dáil.

If we have learned anything in recent years, it is that when a Bill reaches the Seanad without there having been a single dissenting voice in the Dáil, we should be at least wary of its contents. It often means that a Bill is not evidence-based or that it is a tokenistic measure designed to signal the virtue of those proposing it rather than to effect real and meaningful change for the better. The Government and the Dáil have developed a habit of clapping through legislation rather than engaging in forensic scrutiny. The business of forensic scrutiny is not helped by a tendency to rush legislation through with the guillotining of Bills and so on. There is very little respect for the democratic process on show at the moment. Any policy which has unanimous support on all sides should be subject to even more scrutiny because the critical faculties of these Houses can be dull enough at the best of times but they are further eroded if there is any danger of groupthink.

The concept of equal pay for work of equal value has been enshrined at EU level since the 1970s in no small part due to the work of the EU Commissioner and later President, Patrick Hillery. The Labour Party leader at the time, Michael O'Leary, sought a derogation for Ireland from the equal pay directives, something that the Labour Party should always bear in mind. The late President Hillery would be more than surprised to hear some of the rhetoric that has emerged from his own party on the issue. Some of the commentary is facile. After 50 years of significant leaps and bounds with regard to the rights of women, one would swear that Ireland has been transported back to the 1950s in the last few years, with some of the rhetoric that one hears about these issues.

This Bill is founded on the premise that a gender pay gap of 14% exists in the European Union with a gap of 14.4% here in Ireland. This figure has been accepted without question or analysis by the Dáil or the Minister. Does that mean that men are being paid 14% more than women for work of equal value? It does not because that would be a breach of EU law. The gap is calculated from the difference between the average gross hourly earnings of all male and female employees regardless of the type of job, their experience, differences in education, the location of the job, the supply of jobs versus the demand for particular skills, and so on. As a result, it is a crude measure with which to analyse this issue.It is like comparing a basket of apples with a basket of oranges and being surprised that there is a 14% difference between them. Even the National Women's Council of Ireland accepts that half the gap can be explained by the factors that I have mentioned. It is a false measure for the 14% figure to be used. It is used almost, as it were, for its shock value and there is not enough of analysis of the detail behind it. The 14% gap was portrayed in the Dáil as being the result of out and out discrimination against women. That is clearly not the case. There is a multiplicity of factors at play. Even the European Parliament's own summary of how the gap is calculated states:

Interpreting the numbers is not as simple as it seems, as a smaller gender pay gap in a specific country does not necessarily mean more gender equality. High gaps tend to be related to a high proportion of women working part time or being concentrated in a restricted number of professions.

The summary also states:

...such as care, sales or education. There are still sectors such as the science, technology and engineering sectors where the proportion of male employees is very high (with more than 80%).

I was very interested in what Senator O'Reilly had to say. I agree with her that we need to think about whether we are just thinking in economic terms about the work people do. Are we factoring sufficiently into this debate the decisions that people make to engage, for example, in care in the home? How do we put a value on that so that we take into account in the way we are thinking? There is a lot of talk about encouraging people into the workplace. When is there going to be more talk about facilitating men and women in the decisions that they will want to take as families? I mean about which of them, for example, might want to make the decision to step out of the workforce and work in the home in the caring of children. That is where we need to repitch much of the discussion.

I was delighted that Senator O'Reilly mentioned the scandal of the tax individualisation policy in recent years, which has militated against families. It is driven by a purely economic view of the person and his or her contribution to society.

Women are four times more likely to work in part-time jobs and, inherently, part-time jobs tend to be lower paid, irrespective of the gender of the employee, for simple reasons of supply and demand. Perhaps work can be done in this area to encourage employers and rethink how we see part-time work. It does not necessarily have to be the case that part-time work tends to be the kind of work that is lower paid. Does the recent experience of Covid and the new emphasis on working from home have something to contribute to this debate and how we order our lives together?

The fact that women work part-time hours more than men is not due to some sexist conspiracy among employers. It is because a large number of women either choose to remain in the home or choose to work part-time in a job because it suits their family circumstances. The Netherlands, for example, has a very high proportion of women who work part time. A 2013 study there stated that women in part-time work have high levels of job satisfaction and a low desire to change working hours. I see no reason the same might not be true for Ireland.

We should not view part-time work as a bad thing but, again, we need to see if we can create incentives. It is good news when we are thinking about more family-friendly structures in the workplace. It is also good news when we examine part-time work in terms of is it being sufficiently valued, particularly if it is work that women are in to a greater degree than men. It is bad news when we obsess about getting people to change their behaviours when it is for them to make decisions that affect their personal lives. I want to warn against any danger or risk of stigmatising those who choose to work part time, women who choose to work part time and the employers who hire them by publicly shaming them with a gender pay gap idea, which suggests that women are actually being paid less than men per work done for equal work. Where that happens is a scandal, it must be targeted and of course it is against the law.

The proponents of this Bill in the Dáil were keen to highlight disparities in individual cases of well-paid, high-end professional jobs but conspicuously less keen to speak about the structure of the workforce, the choices that women and families make for themselves or the decisions that they make to work part time.

In conclusion, I have no problem with this Bill per sebut we need a broader debate about how we structure the economy and whether we show sufficient respect for the choices that people want to make and enable them to make that choice.