Smaller firms 'should be included in gender pay gap legislation'

The pay gap between women and men is 14% in Ireland, meaning for every euro men earn, women earn 86 cent.

Smaller companies with 50 employees or more should be included under proposed gender pay gap legislation requiring companies to publish details of salaries and bonuses to both male and female employees.

That’s according to the National Women’s Council of Ireland (NCWI), which has expressed concern the proposed legislation may not go far enough to have an impact on the lives of women.

The pay gap between women and men is 14% in Ireland, meaning that for every euro men earn, women earn 86 cent.

The concerns come as Equality Minister Roderic O’Gorman this week told the Seanad he intended to bring forward amendments to the Gender Pay Gap Information Bill 2019 in the next two weeks and to enact the legislation as quickly as possible.

"I am committed to enabling the enactment of this Bill as early as possible and will seek to do so after the Easter recess. I view the Bill as a priority so it will languish no more," Mr O'Gorman said.

"I intend to bring legislative amendments to Cabinet in the next fortnight which will allow the Bill to progress to Report Stage," he added.

While welcoming moves to progress the new law as a “good start”, NCWI director Orla O’Connor sounded caution that the proposed Bill will have “significant shortcomings”.

“We welcome it as a good first step but we’re not expecting it to go far enough in terms of making a real difference to the gender pay gap,” Ms O’Connor said.

The NWCI said the legislation should apply to companies of 50 employees or more if it is to have an impact.

“The legislation will specify companies with over 250 employees, much larger companies, and we know that for the vast majority of female workers they work in companies with smaller numbers of employees. So this will not have an impact on many workplaces,” Ms O’Connor said.

We believe it should start at companies with 50 employees if we are going to have a real impact in terms of the gender pay gap.”

Data from the Central Statistics Office shows the majority of companies in Ireland have fewer than 10 employees and that fewer than 200 firms had more than 250 employees in 2018.

The NCWI is also looking for the legislation to include an obligation on companies to produce an action plan to address any pay gaps that arise and also to include sanctions for companies that do not publish data on pay and bonuses.

“It’s our understanding that there may be a reference to action plans but it won’t be an obligation. That’s a significant shortcoming. If we’re going to report on gaps there needs to be enforcement on what companies are going to do about it,” Ms O'Connor said, adding it was not clear if the legislation would feature any sanctions.

Phasing in the requirement on companies and public bodies to be more transparent on pay could work but it would be dependent on how long this would take, Ms O’Connor said.

The NCWI has also made a submission to the Commission on Pensions this week to provide a full contributory pension to all women regardless of whether they took time out to care for family or the number of years that they worked.

When the gender pay and pension gap are combined there is a 35% differential between women and men.