Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senators. We are dealing with a number of proposals in this section including: reducing the reporting exemption for employers with more than 50 employees to employers with more than 20 employees; reducing the reporting period for employers with more than 150 employees from three years of the making of the first regulations, to two years; reducing the reporting period for employers of more than 250 employees from two years of the making of the first regulations, to 12 months; and requiring employers with more than 50 employees to report on their gender pay gap from three years from the making of the first regulations.

It is appropriate to recognise that when setting the reporting thresholds and the incremental timeline, the unions and the employer representative groups were consulted. There was an agreed approach to how the requirements of the legislation would be rolled out, with a focus on allowing the smaller companies the time to learn from larger companies, and how the larger companies would already have the capacity to undertake significant work like this and publish the wage surveys and other relevant pieces of data, given the HR and mechanisms available to them.

Many Senators have recognised that employers have been working on the basis of this legislation and have been expecting this legislation. In fairness, they have been expecting this legislation and they have seen those timelines set out. If we are talking about such employers expecting something, there are proposals to shift quite radically the timelines in the context of what is suggested in this set of proposals. I am cognisant of the point made by Senator Pauline O'Reilly, and particularly for those smaller employers, on the very significant change to an agreed timeline. Making such a change will, and we would all admit this, add an administrative burden. It is one that should be added as we go forward. As these smaller companies and employers are in the middle of recovering from the Covid pandemic, it is a burden, but I do not believe we should at this time break the agreement negotiated across the various sectors for those smaller employers.

On pseudonymisation and bringing down the threshold to employers of fewer than 20 employees rather than 50 employees, I have made the point that this would be problematic in ensuring anonymity when the data about pay is published by the smaller companies. It could potentially lead to salaries and wages of individual workers being identified in the context of the information coming out. This is certainly not something we were seeking to achieve or seeking to allow to occur under this legislation.

Senator Bacik referred to the percentage of employees who would be covered by this legislation. Senator Sherlock also cited figures. Loath as I am to get into a statistical analysis argument with Senator Sherlock, on our side we believe that 65% of employees will be covered by this legislation when it has been fully rolled out across all categories. This is just short of two thirds of all employees in the State. This is a significant amount.

I will make two final points. A number of Senators have described some companies as rearing to go. There is absolutely nothing to stop voluntary reporting.There is nothing left for them to advertise and Senator Warfield spoke to many companies making a virtue out of their passion for equality. Many companies can publish this information and a template will be there for how they will publish the information and the technique in which the various reporting categories will be available, and they can take advantage of this.

One of the changes I made on Report Stage in Dáil Éireann and which I spoke to briefly was to shorten the period for review of this Bill. It is important when we are making a significant change, as this Bill will be, that we give it the time to work so that we are reviewing a completed process. It is also important the review is not so long that it is on the never-never. I felt that five years to undertake a review of this legislation was too lengthy so that is why I have brought that down to four years. That will allow a full cycle of all companies with more than 50 employees to have been given the opportunity to implement this. At that point, the Legislature will have the opportunity to review and perhaps make changes. As I said earlier, there is EU legislation coming forward as well and who knows how that will affect requirements. However, my understanding is that within the directive, the EU's threshold is 250 employees. Its threshold is miles above the one we are looking to introduce. That is not to say that should be used as a ceiling for ourselves in any way but it is relevant in terms of the figures we have chosen.