Noel Rock (Dublin North West, Fine Gael)
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810. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation her views on the latest report which showed that the gender pay gap has widened by 6.5% in the past five years; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [11873/17]

Mary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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Policy responsibility for gender equality in employment remains with my colleagues the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality, Frances Fitzgerald TD and her colleague David Stanton TD, Minister of State at the Department of Justice and Equality with special responsibility for Equality, Immigration and Integration. To that end Minister of State Stanton is chairing a Strategy Committee to advise the Department of Justice and Equality on the preparation of the new National Women’s Strategy. In public consultation the gender pay has emerged as an issue of concern to many respondents.

Under Section 10 of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission Act 2014, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHERC) has a statutory role to ‘keep under review the adequacy and effectiveness of law and practice in the State in relation to the protection of human rights and equality’.

With regards to my Department, in 2015 Ministers Richard Bruton and Ged Nash (then Minister for Jobs Enterprise and Innovation and Minister for Business and Employment, respectively) wrote to the Low Pay Commission (LPC) asking it to report on the preponderance of women on the national minimum wage.  

The LPC report found only 5% of employees are on the National Minimum Wage. It is self-evident that men and women on the National Minimum Wage receive the same remuneration per hour - €9.25 per hour. However, 64.7% of employees on the National Minimum Wage are women. Reasons suggested by the report for this are: women tend to work part-time more often than men because of caring responsibilities, the cost of childcare and women are over-represented in the Accommodation and Food sector, which carries the greatest risk factor of being on the National Minimum Wage. The report was brought to Government and published in October 2016.