Fill the pension and childcare gap in Budget 2017

Published: Wednesday, September 21, 2016

The National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI) today launched their 2017 Pre Budget Submission, ‘Fill the Gap’, calling on the Government to tackle the deep inequalities women face in the pension system and invest in affordable childcare.

Pension

Orla O’Connor, Director of NWCI said,

“The pension gap between women and men is widening, now standing at 37 per cent. We need to turn our focus from measures solely encouraging women to enrol in private pensions and instead using the opportunity of Budget 2017 to take action to increase women’s access to pensions and to provide women with a decent income in their older years.”

Orla O’Connor continued,

“Women predominately rely on state pensions to provide an income in their older years, yet they have considerably less access to state pensions than men. Currently only 16 per cent of women receive the full pension, reflecting both the legacy of the marriage bar and a system poorly designed to support individual entitlement or recognise the care work which women carry out. Rather than address these inequalities, the Government have allowed them to deepen in recent years by increasing contributory thresholds and making it even harder to purchase voluntary credits. NWCI calls on the Government to introduce the promised Homemakers Credit and backdate it to 1973, to coincide with the lifting of the marriage bar.  It is critical that Budget 2017 moves us towards a universal pension system which gives both women and men equal access to a comprehensive pension guarantee.”

Early Years Care and Education

Orla O’Connor continued,

“We welcome the fact that we are now seeing government announcements to introduce subsidies for childcare, which NWCI has long campaigned for. However they need to reduce the costs for all parents, with higher supports for those on low incomes. Affordability of childcare has been called consistently ignored by successive governments and parents have been left struggling to pay  costs which would be unacceptable in any other EU country. Budget 2017 must address this deficit.”

Orla O’Connor concluded,

“As the primary responsibility for childcare in Ireland continues to be placed on women, these high costs have had a devastating impact on gender equality in Ireland. The lack of affordable childcare continues to be cited as the key obstacle to women's full participation in employment and in public and civil life. Women are making decisions which impact their career progression, working hours and types of employment based on childcare considerations, and this cannot continue. NWCI recommendations would provide both immediate benefit and also set us on a course to provide a sustainable childcare infrastructure for both children and parents.”

Ends /
For more information, please contact Sarah Clarkin, 085 8619087

Note to Editors:

The full NWCI’s Pre Budget Submission is available here.