The Gender Pay Gap Information Bill is here

Published: Wednesday, May 15, 2019

Ireland’s gender pay gap of 13.9% has serious implications for a woman’s lifetime earnings, her life and career decisions and her ability to live in older years with a decent income. The Gender Pay Gap Information Bill introduces some important provisions and once implemented will contribute to a more open, transparent and balanced society.

The Bill will, for the first time, require employers to publish statistics on the gender pay gap within their organisations, shining the spotlight on pay imbalances. While this is to be welcomed, the legislation will only initially apply to companies of 250 staff or more and then, on a phased basis, move to companies employing 50 or more staff.  It is estimated that the Bill will capture just 1.4% of firms and 57% of all employees.

Therefore NWCI, alongside ICTU, SIPTU, and Fórsa have called for the Bill to apply to employers with 20 or more employees as this would capture 70% of employees. The legislation does contain a welcome requirement for employers to provide a statement alongside their statistics setting out the proposals they will take to remedy the gender pay gap is very welcome inclusion.The inclusion of a narrative to contextualise the statistics, alongside an Action Plan to eliminate the identified gaps was strongly advocated for by NWCI during the pre-legislative scrutiny of the proposed legislation.

We are calling for the Bill to be amended to ensure that this Action Plan is a mandatory requirement. For more information see our Recommended List of Amendments (May 2019), our Joint Letter with SIPTU FORSA and ICTU to the Joint Committee on Justice & Equality (January 2019), our Opening Statement to the Joint Committee on Justice & Equality (November 2018), our Paper on Pay Transparency (July 2018), and our Publication on How to Close the Gender Pay Gap (November 2017), all of which are available on our website.