Nessa Cosgrove (Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is very welcome. It is great to see a woman in the role and I have no doubt she will excel at it.

I will speak about poverty and women’s health. Poverty affects the health of men and women but there is the feminisation of poverty, by which I mean, women experience poverty at a higher level and more severely than men. This is caused by discrimination, breaks in periods of working life and, particularly, low wages in what are seen as female professions, including the caring professions in the areas of home care, healthcare and early years. Up to 98% of people working in the early years sector are women and 79% of people working in social care are women. The current minimum wage is €13.50 per hour but the lowest rate for childcare workers through the employment regulation order for the early years sector is €13.65, which is just 15 cent more than the minimum wage. This is an absolute scandal when we think we could not go out to work if it was not for these early years workers who are looking after our children. The lower hourly rate for care assistants is €14.79 but, shockingly, there are still examples where, despite employment regulation orders, care assistant posts are being advertised for less, particularly in migrant communities, which we rely on so much. It really shows a disrespect to low-paid workers.

Low pay has consequences for women’s health. Low-paid workers are likely to have poorer working conditions with regard to sick pay, maternity pay and holidays. They have fewer collective bargaining rights. I will give a shout out to the Irish Women Workers Unions during the 1945 laundry strike. If it was not for them saying they needed two weeks holidays back to back to look after themselves and their children, getting such holidays would never have happened.

Low pay can lead to stress, mental health difficulties, depression, anxiety and addiction. This is amplified by women having the majority of the unpaid care duties and domestic work in the home. There is not a cohabiting couple here that does not argue about the unequal division of unpaid work in the house.

Disadvantage is a consequence of poverty and exclusion and women living with economic disadvantage have shorter life expectancies. Traveller women have a life expectancy of 11.5 to 12 years fewer than other Irish women. Poverty and disadvantage will probably always exist but there is a way forward, and I would like the Minister to intervene in this regard and work across Departments. We could lift nearly 60,000 women out of poverty and disadvantage by recognising their key roles as carers and early years educators and paying them appropriately through very simple State mechanisms such as employment regulation orders and, crucially, by enforcing them.