Regina Doherty (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will definitely be retired at that stage. It is just not good enough. It is not from a lack of ambition, so there has to be some other plausible reason, and we need to feel our way through to get to the bottom of it. The Senator has asked for a debate on the issue and I am glad he has. I will certainly take pleasure in organising it. We will in the next few weeks get to the bottom of what is going on, so that one third of the Irish population will be able to come out of their houses in the morning, will not have to get into their cars, and will be able to walk to a decent local bus or train service or even hop on a scooter if they are only going to travel a few kilometres up the road. We need to have that conversation.

Senator Cummins raised the issue of An Bord Pleanála, and the upsides and downsides of the organisation. We know, and I think it is not necessarily a criticism of the organisation but of the strategic housing development, SHD, process, that there have been months of delays in decisions that would have been made within six months a number of years ago. There are people waiting for months on standard decisions that should be coming out of An Bord Pleanála. The Senator also highlighted the fact the organisation gave the green light to the construction of 1,592 new apartments on the northside of Dublin this week, which is most welcome.

Senator O'Loughlin opened proceedings today with the welcome reminder that, as much as some of our male counterparts would like to tell us the gender pay gap does not exist, today is the day when some women in Ireland basically stop working because the boys get paid more than the girls do, and the boys will keep getting paid until the end of the year and the girls get paid less.We must all band together to say we need a society where a job is paid on merit and it does not and should not make any difference whether I wear a pair of trousers or a skirt to work. I should be paid on the quality of the work I do and the length of years of experience I have. This nonsense of the continuing practice in this country of paying women less just because they are women absolutely has to stop. Much and all as I probably knows it galls people when we do this, we must raise this issue every single year and we will keep doing so until this practice stops.