Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
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135. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the policies in place to increase female participation in the labour force; and if an analysis of this area has been carried out. [27325/18]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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My Department understands the importance of female participation in the labour market. As we draw closer to full employment, it is essential that enterprise in Ireland has access to high-quality, adaptable and flexible talent pools. Enhancing female participation has the potential to address the growing need for skills and talent and to deliver significant social and gender equality benefits. With this in mind, I have included an action in the Action Plan for Jobs 2018 relevant to female participation. Action 28 aims to ‘identify relevant policy issues for cohorts with low participation rates based on patterns of labour market participation’. My Department has lead responsibility on this action and is currently working with several other Government departments to ensure the completion of this action in the second half of the year.

Policy responsibility for participation falls across several government Departments. A number of measures are underway to facilitate female participation in the labour market. It is clear that to make greater female participation a reality, barriers to entering/re-entering the labour market must be addressed. In recent years, several initiatives have been launched to facilitate the return of women to employment. These include:

- Action 27 in the Action Plan for Jobs 2018 relates to the development of the Affordable Childcare Scheme. Access to affordable childcare is often identified as a barrier to women’s labour market participation in Ireland. The Department of Children and Youth Affairs have responsibility for the continued implementation of reforms to existing schemes and progressing the Affordable Childcare Scheme. The deadline for this action is also for the latter half of this year.

- The Department of Justice and Equality introduced the ‘Women Returning to the Workforce Initiative’ in 2017. The supports range from confidence building, career guidance and support in completing applications, to training programmes and work placements.

- The Department of Justice and Equality launched the ‘National Strategy for Women and Girls’ in 2017.  This strategy focuses on the needs of working women by proposing to continue to increase investment in childcare, to take action to tackle the gender pay gap, to improve the conditions of women in precarious employment and to provide additional help to women entrepreneurs.

- The Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection implements the ‘Pathways to Work Programme’ which aims to increase active labour market participation by people (including lone parents and people with disabilities) of a working age so as to help ensure a supply of labour at competitive rates and to minimise welfare dependency. This strategy includes specific actions to increase labour market participation and employment progression of people who are not currently active in the labour market and to apply the concept of active inclusion as a guiding principle – particularly from 2018-2020.

- Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) aims to play a strong role in addressing gender imbalance in science by committing to increase the representation of women among SFI award holders to 30% by 2020 and to improve the representation and progression of women in all aspects of STEM careers in Ireland. Through its Starting Investigator Research Grant (SIRG) programme, SFI has piloted an initiative to encourage increased applications from female researchers. This has resulted in a significant increase in the number of SIRG applications from and SIRG awards to women.

- Industry have also initiated programmes to attract women back to the workforce. ‘Women ReBoot’ is a programme led by Technology Ireland and Skillnets (which is funded through the National Training Fund through the

Department of Education and Skills and private industry). The programme aims to redress the gender imbalance in tech by attracting women with STEM experience back to the sector. This is delivered through a mix of coaching, online learning, networking skills and work placements in leading tech companies. Women ReBoot has been highly successful in helping participants secure employment.