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

I am not sure that replacing "may" with "shall", as proposed in this amendment, will have a huge impact in terms of the detail of the running. I do not mean that as a criticism of the points the Senator is making. I spoke briefly on the website, but I note the Senator has another amendment on it. We will be setting up a centralised website. Employers are welcome to publish their gender pay gap data on their own websites if they so wish, but there will be one centralised website, which will probably be the most significant part in terms of being able to demonstrate and compare data. It is hoped it will have searchability functions in order that it will be possible to compare which companies have the greatest gap and the least gap and the like. The view at the moment is that my Department will administer that website. As I said, we will be putting out the request for tender on that shortly. The website will take a bit of work. I understand that on its first day the UK version had so many hits it crashed. We want to avoid that type of situation. The website will be used as a central element in disseminating this really important information, allowing a recognition of good practice and highlighting those employers whose practices are resulting in their female employees receiving significantly less pay than their male counterparts.

Returning to the question of replacing "may" with "shall", as proposed in the amendment, I emphasise again the importance of having some degree of flexibility in the design of these regulations. There will be a degree of complexity in the regulations in terms of meeting the various criteria set out in section 20(A). I believe it is necessary in this section to provide the degree of flexibility that is provided by "may" rather than "shall".