Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

It is important that we now move ahead with the Bill. I thank the Minister for accepting an amendment on Report Stage in the Dáil because the review will be key. We must not renegotiate something else at this point or postpone this for another three or four years. We need this legislation enacted and in place now. It gives us transparency and an understanding of what is happening across the board in companies.

It is not legal to discriminate. Having said that, it is difficult for individual employees within companies to take cases and that is why this legislation is important. This is an historic day. We finally have this Gender Pay Gap Information Bill 2019 before the House and, hopefully, it will pass today. I anticipate that all Senators will support it, and some of us just have these small issues with it.

Companies have been preparing for this legislation for years. As I said on Committee Stage, it has been companies of a certain size which have been preparing for and expecting this legislation to come into effect. Smaller companies were never to be included, so they have not been preparing and ramping up for it. We must give them time to do that. Perhaps when we come to review the legislation we will see that things have changed and companies will have more capacity and administrative capacity. I hope at that stage companies will see how well the legislation is working, how well this kind of transparency reflects on companies and perhaps then those smaller companies might take the leap. The review might perceive that and take it on board.