Ivana Bacik (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his response. I would always defer to Senator Sherlock on matters of statistics. Her figures are from 2018, so I am sure the Minister arrived at 65% of employers and at that point the threshold of 50 employees would have captured 57.5% of all employees. That may well have gone up, as the Minister said, to 65%. The point is this will only be the case once the legislation is fully in force with the threshold at 50 employees, which will take some time based on the incremental approach. Our argument was that setting it to 20 employees now would capture a greater proportion of all employees - nearly three quarters - and this would have been preferable. However, I acknowledge the Minister has made that amendment providing for a shorter review, and that is welcome.

I also acknowledge the Minister's point that this legislation is not the ceiling of our ambition. We were talking about this earlier in the context of the climate Bill as well, saying employers could do better and apply the provisions of the legislation voluntarily in a broader and more expansive way. That brings us back to the Athena Swan programme, which is based on incentivising good practice by providing bronze awards. I was proud to lead the Trinity College Dublin law school's successful quest for a bronze award in recognition of good practice in promoting gender equality. That is an approach of the carrot rather than the stick to incentivising good practice, and we see a similar approach taken to gender pay gap reporting in Australia, where good practice employers are formally acknowledged. That is also worthy of mention.

In the circumstances, I will withdraw amendment No. 13, and I reserve the right to bring it back later.