Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Black for outlining her position on this. As a female Minister of State in the Department of Finance, I have a very acute interest in the gender distribution of policy made in the Department and particularly on the inequitable outcomes for women in pensions and on pension poverty. I am aware of that in everything we do. I appreciate the Senator has had an exchange with the Minister for Finance on this. I know he has outlined the work of the interdepartmental pensions reform and taxation group. I do not wish to repeat anything my colleague has said and treat the House like that but I will outline some of the broader work being done on identifying opportunities for better pension equity between men and women in particular. It arises out of a number of different policy fall-offs where women have stepped out of the workforce for different reasons and have been at a strategic disadvantage over time. It is a historical issue and it cannot be allowed to be a current issue as well.

There is something I think is particularly important on this, albeit from a slightly different angle to that suggested by the Senator. It is a key focus and one of the real drivers around capital markets union at EU level, for example. I was at a Eurogroup meeting facilitated by the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, which had a specific focus on capital markets union and how access to wealth development and to small investment products, particularly on a retail basis, can really contribute to better pension equity. There are very strong habits in the Dutch financial system where people get involved in developing investments at a much earlier stage and in a much more balanced way throughout society. We see how it is not the preserve of any particular class or profession but rather there is a much more balanced approach across the economy and there is very little pension poverty, in part as a consequence of that approach. One thing we want to do at a European level is have a better retail investment strategy. There is a particularly strong opportunity for women who, from more and more of the data I look at, appear much less likely to engage in investment or are much less likely to place a focus on their own pension provision than is often the case. It is a really serious issue and I suggest there are a number of different ways of coming to this. One is a focus on gender budgeting in the Department. Of course, as a female Minister of State I would say that if you have enough female Minsters making policy decisions over time that you are less likely to need to place a gender lens on every decision and that those things should be much more natural and much more inherent in the policy development process but it is also about recognising the gaps in the private market where women have not felt themselves as comfortable or as included in some of the products that are available. I say all of this in addition to the point the Senator makes and not necessarily as an alternative. It just to say that this is something that is a very strong focus for me as Minister of State in the Department where I think the voice of women has been under-represented over time. We see it in taxation decisions, around decisions on coming back to the workforce and the marginal tax implications that may impact on a person’s decision about whether to come in and out of the workforce. It has fallen in a poorly distributed way against women time and time again.

I note the broad thrust of what the Senator is trying to do with this recommendation and I admire it. As she is aware, I am not in a position to take recommendations of this kind at this Stage of the Bill but I do not wish to leave the Senator with any sense that this is not to the front of my mind in terms of developing pension equity and gender equity through a number of different financial instruments.