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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 1 Dec 1976

Vol. 294 No. 8

Anti-Discrimination (Employment) Bill, 1975: Second Stage.

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

This legislation is directed at women at work. I have repeatedly stressed over the last two years that the status of women is fundamentally determined by the nature of the tasks traditionally assigned to them by society.

The prevailing prejudice of our society enshrined in constitutional social theory in this country was that a woman's place is in the home. It was not accepted that women had the same right of choice as other citizens. Whatever the merits of the social theory as laid down in Article 41 of the Constitution, what has been happening in Ireland is that there has been an upward trend in participation by women in the labour market; this matches trends elsewhere. This is notable for two groups of women in particular—those in child bearing years who are increasingly remaining in the labour force; and those in middle years with grown children who have been returning to the job market in greater numbers.

Recently, the European Trade Union Confederation had harsh things to say about the small proportion of married women in the work force in this country. We are at the bottom of the league they said, with 13.5 per cent of married women going out to work, compared with 57 per cent in Britain and 60 per cent in West Germany. They see this as proof of discrimination against women. What they have overlooked is that we have not been industrialised for as long as Britain and West Germany. For historical and social reasons the entry of women into industry here is a more recent phenomenon. Whilst I would not go along with the European Trade Union Confederation in their conclusions, I have to concede that prejudice undoubtedly exists against women in industry.

In a work force where we have 26 per cent women, the statistics of women who hold managerial positions in Ireland reveal a depressing picture but, of course, no worse than the statistics of the number of women who hold decision-making positions in any sphere of activity in Ireland, whether we take politics, the public service, trade unions or any area of administration. When we move away from the traditionally female occupations we find equally depressing statistics, for example, in the professions—only 1 per cent of engineers, 2 per cent of accountants, 3 per cent of architects and just over 7 per cent of the legal profession are women. Even in the occupations which are predominantly female, we find that the top administrative posts are held by men. For some reason women are perceived by men and, indeed, sometimes by women themselves to lack the qualities which would fit them for positions of responsibility and leadership. I think this is a misconception which has no basis in fact.

We are all familiar with the explanations which are usually advanced for the absence of women from managerial positions; first there is just plain prejudice, meaning mainly male prejudice, then there is the narrow concept of women's role —I previously referred to the reference in the Constitution to the appropriate place for women in our society—the effects of single sex schooling and, of course, the range of subjects which girls have traditionally studied at school.

A policy for the greater involvement of women in managerial positions must be developed. I do not believe that managerial ability is concentrated exclusively in the male sex. Managers, men or women, are not born; managerial talent is developed —and it is not developed overnight. The major inequality lies in the type of employment taken up by women, the lowliest jobs are those left to them and the cure for this is in the improvement in education and training which must be provided for them before they enter employment.

Very few women have come forward for training at AnCO centres but increased efforts are now being made to change this situation and the number of women taking courses has increased considerably over the last few years. In 1975 a total of 813 women, 25 per cent of whom were married, completed AnCO courses and this year up to September, 978 have been trained at AnCO centres and there are 510 undergoing training at present. I have directed that all AnCO courses be open to women and a special effort is being made to encourage more women to take up apprenticeships. Although some progress has been made in this area, as yet, possibly because of social attitudes, women have not come forward for apprenticeship training to any significant degree.

This legislation which is now before the House is intended to remedy the imbalance which exists. As I said before, it is the status of women's jobs which determines their place in the economy and ultimately their place in society. The Bill will provide women with equal opportunity with men to realise their full potential in employment when it comes to selection for a job, training within the job, or promotion or working conditions. The Bill will make it unlawful to discriminate against women in employment and it will provide for enforcement procedures under which women who feel that they have been discriminated against can avail of legal remedies. It will no longer be possible to segregate jobs, managerial or otherwise, into men's jobs and women's jobs. I might mention that the Bill will permit "positive" discrimination in favour of women in regard to the provision of special training where this is necessary to adjust an unequal balance in a particular employment. Positive discrimination of this nature, which I think is necessary if equal opportunity in employment is to become a reality, will be permitted under section 13.

The Bill defines discrimination as arising in four ways : first of all, direct discrimination where a woman is treated less favourably than a man because of her sex, then indirect discrimination, where a condition or requirement is applied equally to men and women but the requirement is such that a considerably smaller proportion of women than of men could comply with it and the requirement is not essential for the particular job; thirdly where a married person is treated less favourably than an unmarried person; and, lastly, where a person is victimised because of pursuing the legal right to equal treatment which this Bill confers.

Having defined discrimination, the Bill then sets out the employment situations in which it is unlawful to discriminate, namely recruitment, training, promotion and working conditions. While the Bill is aimed primarily at discrimination by employers it will also make unlawful discrimination in activities which are related to employment, such as, discrimination by organisations concerned with the provision of training courses, as well as placement and guidance services provided by employment agencies. Admission to membership and the benefits provided by trade unions, and employer organisations is also covered by the Bill, for the reason that such membership can affect eligibility and prospects for employment. Finally, discriminatory advertisements will be unlawful under the provisions of the Bill.

While the Bill is intended to deal with discrimination against women in employment, it will equally apply where discrimination is practised against men. It is my intention in this Bill that the coverage should be as comprehensive as possible and, consequently, exclusions from the scope of the Bill should be kept at a minimum. I have, however, accepted the case for the exclusion of employments listed in section 10; for example, the Defence Forces, the Garda Síochána, the prison service and employment in a private household. I have provided in this section that any of these employments may be brought within the scope of the legislation later by an affirmative order.

The Labour Court will have a central role in the enforcement provisions of the Bill. Officers of the Labour Court have been given various powers including the power to require persons to furnish information. It has been represented to me that employers should not be required to disclose any references or reports relating to the character or suitability of any person seeking employment, for the purposes of investigation by officers of the Labour Court. I have accepted that this should be so and provision is made accordingly. I felt it was important to ensure that the confidentiality of the system of character references, should not be disturbed.

On Committee Stage I intend to make provision for the establishment of an employment equality agency. It has been represented to me by the Women's Representative Committee, which is under the chairmanship of Deputy Eileen Desmond, and other organisations representing women that an independent agency would be the most effective way of promoting equality of opportunity in employment as well as dealing with public interest cases.

In the United States, an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was established in 1972. In Britain an Equal Opportunity Commission was established last year with enforcement and promotional functions under the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975. A similar commission has been established in Northern Ireland.

The agency will be concerned with eliminating discrimination in employment, promoting equality of opportunity in employment and advising on the working of anti-discrimination legislation. The task of the body would be nothing less than the removal of all traces of injustice and inequality whether in our laws or social arrangements.

The new equality agency will investigate practices that appear to be discriminatory. If such practices are found to be unlawful, the agency will use their enforcement powers to eliminate them. They will have powers of formal investigation similar to those of a judicial inquiry to require information, production of documents, attendance of witnesses, and so on. A nondiscrimination notice issued by the agency will require the person concerned to stop the practice in question. These notices will be enforceable in the courts by way of injunction.

The agency will have sole rights to deal with discriminatory advertisements, instructions to discriminate and pressure to discriminate. They will be able to assist individuals in important or significant cases which raise questions of principle. They will undertake a programme of education about discrimination in employment aimed at opening up new opportunities and trying to change public attitudes which operate against the interests of women in employment. Complete equality will only come to pass if people question the limitations put on women in the past and agree to get rid of them.

The planning of the agency must be worked out carefully. It will take a lot of work but it is hoped that the agency will become operative before the end of 1977.

In commending this Bill to the House, I am fully aware that the law can never entirely prevent discrimination but it can get rid of the more obvious forms of it. Progress towards equality of opportunity for women depends to a large extent on a change of attitude on the part of everyone— employers, workers and the public generally. The aim is that, following the enactment of this legislation, both sides of industry would work together and secure by their joint efforts the improvements in the status of women in the employment field. I hope that the Bill will create a climate favourable to change which will result in more and more able and well-qualified women reaching responsible positions on merit and in proportion to their numbers in the population.

The demand of women for equal opportunity in all areas of employment is a just demand. For society as a whole the implementation of the Bill must represent a significant advance by simply getting rid of a system of discrimination which is wasteful of talent and ability. I commend the Bill to the House.

One of the promises of that hastily-prepared document, the election manifesto of the Coalition Parties in February, 1973, was that legislation would be introduced to end all forms of existing discrimination against women. However, in no other area have the Minister and the Government failed so much as in their attempts to fulfil that promise. I might remind the House that it was Fianna Fáil who set up the Commission on the Status of Women and that it was Fianna Fáil, too, who accepted the interim report of that commission in August, 1971. That report referred basically to the equal pay question. The first steps taken in that sphere were those contained in that interim agreement. A final report from the commission was submitted to the then Minister for Finance in December, 1972, just before the change of Government. To say the least the forwards-backwards approach to this matter during the past four years has been disappointing.

We had the Anti-Discrimination (Pay) Bill, 1974 early in the summer of that year but there was the disgraceful performance of the Government in reneging on the basic and agreed principle of that Act. This was done by a short-cut measure.

This Bill follows very much on the same lines of all the legislation being introduced by the Minister. It is a Bill designed to eliminate discrimination against women and to eliminate discrimination at all levels in employment from the time a job is first advertised. For a long time Fianna Fáil have been committed to making it easier for women to progress in their careers. This Bill attempts also to do that but one must question seriously the intentions, genuine or otherwise, of the Government. I offered my sympathy to the Minister in February last when he was forced by the arch-conservative Fine Gael Party to bring in an equal pay amendment Bill the Second Stage of which was not completed. In view of the Minister's stupid utterances recently on one of his rare visits to his constituency I shall have more to say about that in a moment. That amending Bill was not completed as a result of a directive from the EEC. It was at that time, too, that our eminent Commissioner, Dr. Hillery, was referred to by the Minister for Finance as the Fianna Fáil Commissioner.

Disgraceful.

Dr. Hillery is the man that we are proud to have as our President, he having been nominated for the office of President by this party. His stand on the equal pay issue was in line with the attitude and the commitment of Fianna Fáil. That attitude is very different from the type of window-dressing in which this Minister indulges. There is window-dressing in this Bill but I welcome those aspects of it that are in line with the recommendations in the Report of the Commission on the Status of Women, but what has happened the other recommendations? I also welcome the Minister's reference to the appointment of an agency but why has it taken until now to realise that this is most essential and I believe the most important thing if we are to make progress as we hope to do in giving equal opportunity to women?

It is amazing that the Minister this morning made no reference to the fact that the First Stage of this Bill was introduced in October, 1975. There were reasons for that; we had a by-election in Mayo; the sun was shining brightly then for the Coalition, the sun that is now sinking very rapidly. At that time the Minister among other Ministers was anxious to maintain the image he had of being the champion of women. In my opinion, he has reneged on that title in a disgraceful manner. This Bill had been consigned to the limbo of forgotten things until this day two weeks ago when I questioned the Taoiseach here as to why it had been so long delayed. Not having received a satisfactory reply, I repeated my question on the following morning. It was ordered for the following Tuesday— last Tuesday—but it was not reached. It would still be lying forgotten if the promptings from this side of the House had not resulted in its resurrection. It was the resurrection of a measure hurriedly prepared and proof of that is that this morning, after 13 months, the Minister announces that he will be providing on Committee Stage for the appointment of an agency. I regard the appointment of an agency as being vitally important if we are to make worthwhile progress under this Bill.

I and my party are not the only people who regard this measure as inadequate, as only a token measure, but it has been improved by the announcement of the setting up of this agency.

I want the Minister to tell me when replying why does it take so long for this Bill to become operative. He said that it would be operative towards the end of 1977; obviously, that is a year from now and more than a year after the introduction of the Bill. So, from the time we introduce legislation until we can set up such an agency two years must elapse. Obviously, before the end of 1977 we shall have a general election. The Fianna Fáil Government will have no hesitation in having the agency operating in the shortest possible time.

My comments on the inadequacies of the Bill are not confined to the Fianna Fáil Party. With the permission of the Chair, I shall quote from the Irish Independent of October 29th, 1975, shortly after the Bill had been introduced. The article is headed: “A further look at the Bill to end discrimination”. The main heading reads: “Less would be embarrassing”. The first paragraph says:

If Ireland had a Trade Descriptions Act there would be no doubt that the Minister for Labour, Mr. O'Leary, would find himself in difficulty over the labelling of, and claims for, his latest piece of work.

And it is highly doubtful if he would win a case brought against him on the ground that the Anti-Discrimination (Employment) Bill, 1975 was misleading, in that he purported it to be a major contribution towards eliminating discrimination against women both in the workplace and at the entrance to the workplace.

That was written by the newspaper's eminent industrial correspondent, proof again that here was somebody interested in industrial development, interested in women playing their rightful role in that development and completely disappointed and disillusioned with the terms of the Bill.

In another paragraph he said:

Otherwise, even if this Bill becomes law, it is likely that it will make no impression on female employment, its terms and conditions. But it will change the appearance of newspaper and television advertisements for jobs and could change the face of collective pay agreements, in that women's rates will have to be abolished.

The final paragraph, referring to legislation generally, says:

This one——

he means this Bill

——is in danger of earning political kudos while leaving the problem untouched.

I believe that proof of the lack of commitment here lies in the delay in bringing forward the Bill to the House on Second Stage. It is almost unbelievable that a Minister could introduce a Second Stage this morning without any reference whatever to the delay. I believe the Minister himself is genuinely committed to the area of social reform but he is shackled and tied down by colleagues not so committed. Legislation in this area has been introduced haphazardly with individual Bills being processed piecemeal through the House and some of them left on the Order Paper at different Stages at present. There has not been sufficient combined effort. Later, I shall point out why I believe that there is at least one section of this Bill that is probably connected with— or an effort should be made to have it so connected—the Unfair Dismissals Bill. I say that because they all concern workers' rights. A streamlining of the machinery for securing these rights is desirable. I make that point by way of constructive criticism.

The Bill has a number of sections dealing with discrimination and a number of questionable ones dealing with exclusions, a number of sections dealing with the machinery to handle cases that will arise. There is no reference to the agency which of course is so desirable and now being introduced, which further proves my point that the Bill was hurried, was not well prepared and is being added to piecemeal.

May I go through some of the sections of the Bill? We will have an opportunity of discussing this again in Committee and it will be interesting then. There is a basis there by which I would hope we can improve the legislation that is being introduced. The first step is the setting up of the agency, an amendment we would have been tabling in any case on Committee Stage. Whether we would have called it an agency or not is not important. What is important is that we would be in favour of setting up a body to progress properly, to assist in equal opportunity of job promotion, of job availability to women. I am looking at section 1 particularly. I remember discussing a specific point in the definitions of the Unfair Dismissals Bill with the Minister on Committee Stage of that Bill last week. At that time we referred to the "relative" clause. It does not look well that with two Bills from the same Department going through this House during the same period, admittedly one introduced a year before the other, little things like this are not exactly the same. It portrays a lack of combined effort by the Minister and his people towards the legislation that is so necessary. For example, there is the definition of the "close relative". I accept that probably legally one can take it as being the same definition as applies to those excluded under the Unfair Dismissals Bill, but certainly it does not read the same. I believe it should.

I am surprised that in this Bill there has not been a definition of the employer. What I want to see is consistency of approach to these measures that are all necessary social reforms designed to improve working conditions and to eliminate areas of discrimination, but all in the interest of the workers either male or female.

Section 2, which deals with Discrimination for the purposes of the Act, must be embarrassing for the Minister. I suspect that this section and the embarrassment created by it have probably been reasons why it was not produced for Second Stage long before now. I have no doubt that when the Minister did introduce this Bill in October, 1975, he was committed then to the full operation of the principle and spirit contained in the Equal Pay Bill. Others prevailed on him and told him it could not be so. As a result he had to renege on the absolute commitment made by him and agreed by us. The section reads:

For the purposes of this Act, discrimination shall be taken to occur in any of the following cases—

(a) where by reason of his sex a person is treated less favourably than a person of the other sex,

(b) where because he is married a married person is treated less favourably than an unmarried person of the same sex, ...

and I presume vice versa. In other words, they are all treated equally. This, of course, has not been the case in the public sector especially, the sector in which the Minister has most control or should have the greatest interest. It has not been observed with regard to equal pay. This must be indeed a very embarrassing section for him.

Section 3 goes on to discrimination by employers and the areas where discrimination can and should be prohibited. One point I would make is that quite honestly at this stage I cannot offer a better description, but I am a little concerned about the term "prospective employee". However, I am sure we will get an opportunity of discussing that in more detail on Committee Stage. I understand what it is intended to mean. I am not so sure that it is the correct definition or term to use there. Section 3 (4) reads:

Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (1), a person shall be taken to discriminate against an employee or prospective employee in relation to conditions of employment if he does not offer or afford to a person or class of persons the same terms of employment (other than remuneration and superannuation), the same working conditions and the same treatment in relation to overtime, shift work, short time, transfers, lay-offs, redundancies, dismissals (other than a dismissal referred to in section 21) and disciplinary measures as he offers or affords to another person or class of persons where both such persons or both such classes are or would be employed on like work.

I asked the Minister about the position there on shift work particularly with reference to night work. How does this affect our commitment under the signing of Convention 89 of the ILO Convention? He is President of the ILO now and is entitled to spell out clearly for us what exactly is meant by the shift work situation where women are concerned. Does it mean that they may do night work in the same way as men do or are there certain restrictions on it? He has a duty to spell it out to the House, particularly in his dual capacity as Minister for Labour and President of the ILO.

Subsection (6) of the same section is completely impracticable. It conveys to me that if ten people are suitably and equally qualified for promotion and only three promotional vacancies are there, then the employer is committing an offence if he does not promote all ten. This he cannot do because there are only three vacancies. As that subsection reads certainly this is the explanation I take from it. I presume this will be discussed on Committee Stage and I would ask the Minister to examine it. I think it needs to be improved. It is not the type of subsection that should be here to be questioned in this manner. I believe it is a completely impracticable situation.

We are eliminating discriminations in the trade unions, in the organisations of employers, in all professional bodies, in vocational training, and in the employment agencies and rightly so. We will support this section but we will be asking questions about some of the terminology used. For example section 6 (b) says:

by refusing or omitting to provide any service.

A very wide interpretation could be put on that. I will not go into details of that interpretation now.

Section 7 (1) refers to discriminatory advertising, a very necessary reference, and section 8 refers to where counselling another person also constitutes discrimination and section 9 refers to discrimination in collective agreements.

Now we come to the first exclusion in section 10. Again the Minister, who seems to have an obsession about keeping the public sector out of all his measures being introduced into this House, as in the Bill he had here last week, has excluded:

(a) in the Defence Forces,

(b) in the Garda Síochána,

(c) in the prison service,

(d) in a private residence or by a close relative, or

(e) by a minister of religion or a religious community.

The question immediately springs to mind why the Garda Síochána, especially now that we have the BanGhardaí? Why this service at all? What is the reason for excluding it? I appreciate the point that the Minister may by order introduce it but I do not think that is right.

When a former Member of this House, Mr. James Dillon, sat on these benches he always condemned legislation giving power to a Minister to legislate by order because he maintained, and I believe rightly so, that the Minister was taking away from the democratic rights of the elected Members of this House. We have had much of that type of legislation in this and recent Bills but I do not believe it is right in this section. I want the Minister to spell out clearly why the public sector have been excluded again and particularly why the male and female members of the Garda Síochána have been excluded. That appears to me to be completely unreasonable and unacceptable if we are to make progress and if this is not just window dressing.

Now we come to the dangerous sections. I can understand how the industrial correspondent in the Irish Independent could refer to what he called the weaknesses and certain dangers hidden in this Bill. I believe the sections dealing with exclusions are dangerous and could not only be used but I fear, may be abused. Section 11 reads:

Nothing in this Act shall make it unlawful for an employer—

(a) to refuse employment in a position to a person who will not undertake all the duties attached to that position or who will not accept all the conditions under which those duties are performed,

I think it was Daniel O'Connell who said that one could drive a coach and four through any Act of Parliament. Section 11 can be used very widely to render ineffective the earlier sections of this Bill. I would ask the Minister to have a further look at that section and its implications. It is pointless introducing measures if we have qualifications or hidden sections that will take from their value and effectiveness. That is one of the reasons why I believe there is a great deal of window dressing attached to these measures.

Section 12 goes to the limit. Here the Minister is doing something which I have never seen in my short experience. He is taking to himself powers of saving not only applying to this Act but also applying to the Conditions of Employment Act, 1936, the Shops (Conditions of Employment) Act, 1938, the Factories Act, 1955 and the Mines and Quarries Act, 1965. Section 12 (2) (b) reads:

Where the Minister proposes to make an order under this subsection, a draft of the proposed order shall be laid before each House of the Oireachtas and the order shall not be made until a resolution approving of the draft has been passed by each House.

Subsection (1) reads:

Notwithstanding any provision of this Act, nothing done by an employer in compliance with any requirement of or under an Act to which this section applies shall constitute discrimination in contravention of this Act.

If Mr. James Dillon was in this House and saw this section he would be very annoyed with the Minister giving himself such wide powers. I do not believe the Minister would use this section as a saving exercise for somebody who may be trying to perpetrate a breach of the Act but there is always the possibility of a Cabinet reshuffle. We might yet have such a reshuffle because a certain gentleman, not with the goodwill or support of the Labour Party, was recently appointed to the European Commission, and there will be a change in his Department. If, for example, one of the many conservatives in the present Cabinet were appointed to the Ministry of Labour, he might take powers to himself that this Minister would not take or support. For that reason section 12 weakens the Bill.

Now we come to the machinery set up to handle cases of discrimination. We will be going through these sections in greater detail on Committee Stage. There is still room for much needed improvement in several areas. Section 19 deals with compensation. The Minister should take into consideration the difficulties that could be experienced by a small employer or a small firm. We should approach this legislation in a more positive way. As I said last week, there should never be an unfair dismissal. That, of course, is the ideal. We should legislate to encourage people to be fair. That is why I consider the omission of that agency to be a very serious shortcoming. I can see that agency playing a very valuable role in the elimination of discrimination. There have been cases of discrimination against women in the past. We should legislate to encourage and educate these people who through tradition or for any other reason are not committed to equal opportunity for all.

I blame the Government for contributing towards the attitudes that exist in some quarters because of the high unemployment situation and their failure to make any worth-while improvement in that situation or to handle the school leaving situation. This has hardened the attitude of many people towards this type of necessary social reform.

In the compensation section, section 19, the Minister should take into account where the shoe might pinch. I accept that I may be criticised as being a little contradictory in this respect, that here I am looking for him to exclude somebody. It could be abused and I accept that that danger exists but I would rather depend on the integrity of the excellent inspectorate of the Department and other officials to ensure that abuses of this kind would not occur.

Section 22 relates closely to the Bill dealing with unfair dismissals. We are talking about the Labour Court here while in the other Bill we were talking about the redundancy tribunal. My words of encouragement here are towards a streamlining of the machinery available to people investigating a dispute over discrimination or unfair dismissals. We should tidy this up. I can assure the Minister of my co-operation if he wishes to expedite measures in this House. I want these measures streamlined, as effective and as simple as possible. I want as little duplication as possible. I read in a British newspaper recently that the introduction of the social legislation in Great Britain created a sizeable staff situation, a high cost in handling cases referred for consideration. The newspaper stated that both sides of the industrial spectrum agreed that the biggest millstone was the introduction of tribunal cases. It stated that they were clogging the machinery and adding to the high costs. I would not like to see a similar situation develop here.

I shall table a number of amendments for Committee Stage. I have been critical of the Bill as not having gone far enough and I criticised the delay in introducing the Second Stage. My party have been committed to support the opportunity for women to make progress in their careers, if and as they wish and that commitment is still there. For that reason I support the legislation but we will endeavour to improve it on Committee Stage. I hope we will not have the same delay we had between the introduction of a Bill and the debate on Second Stage. I hope the Minister will explain why it will take him until the end of 1977 before the agency is set up. The Minister made reference to the fact that Deputy Eileen Desmond, a colleague in my constituency, was chairman of the committee established by him but I should like to remind him that there are lady Members on this side of the House. For that reason I hope that when he is establishing some committees he will stretch the interests of the ladies on such committees across the political spectrum.

I welcome this very important piece of social legislation. The Bill was eagerly awaited by those interested in the promotion of rights for women. That is understandable because it represents a major link in the chain of anti-discrimination legislation introduced in the last three years. Without this Bill the Act dealing with equal pay would be limited in its application. Many women could never benefit from the provisions of that Act because of the relegation of our work force into "men only" and "women only" jobs, the former to carry the superior wage rates, superior promotional prospects and superior job satisfaction. Where we did not have "men only" at entry point "women only" remained the norm with regard to training, promotion, job advancement and job satisfaction. It is sad that there was an acceptance of this situation.

The Minister said that for some reason women are perceived by men and, indeed, sometimes by women themselves, to lack the qualities which would fit them for positions of responsibility and leadership. I agree with the Minister and I also agree with him that it is a misconception that has no basis in fact. I also agree with the Minister that managers, men or women, are not born; that managerial talent is developed but not over-night. However, a good deal of the injustice to our women has its basis in these misconceptions. Militating also against women is the tendency that still persists to regard all men as bread winners and to compensate them accordingly.

Women, on the other hand, are divided into two categories by the many who hold this view, the career woman, who in most cases was single, and the married woman supported by her husband and earning pin money only. The career woman was unmarried and had only herself to support. It was felt that she had no need to pay for the back-up services such as the provision of meals, laundry and so on that men generally pay for. It was considered natural for a woman to be her own servant. It was felt that there was no need to consider her for promotion or advancement of any kind as long as she had what was termed "a nice little job". We are familiar with the term which still persists "a nice job for a girl". Generally, that represented a dead-end job with a false sort of respectability and gentility about it but, nevertheless, it was thought very suitable for a girl because it was presumed she would marry or if she did not she had nobody to support but herself.

The fact that thousands of single girls supported aged parents and that many thousands supported a family and the fact that thousands of men support nobody but themselves did nothing to alter this attitude which obtains in relation to the greater need of men. In order to be consistent about this theory about wage structure and opportunity based on dependants one would need to pay a man with six children more and to give him more opportunities than one would give a man with one or two children and also a married man more than a single man. It never occurred to those who advanced this theory that this should be done. In fact, the theory is reserved only to justify discrimination against women. We have also heard of the two-wage argument, the resistance to two wages going into one house. In my view this argument is reserved for the husband and wife situation only; it is never applied to a household where there are six or seven wage earners provided one of the pay packets does not go to make a married woman independent. The dependant wife mentality is what permeates all our thinking in this area. Society has blind spots and thinking has often been twisted, unjust and, indeed, cruel as far as women are concerned.

The Minister made reference to the White Paper on working women in Europe published by the women trade union leaders group of the European Trade Union Confederation. This paper dealt with the overwhelmingly low proportion of Irish married women among female workers and cited it as evidence of the very, very high degree of discrimination practised against women in Ireland. In The Irish Times of Saturday, 20th November, there is a front page article on the situation. I think the other papers carried this information too. To quote:

Figures show that in 1973 only 13.5 per cent of female workers in Ireland were married compared with 67.2 per cent in Britain, 62 per cent in France and 59.6 per cent in West Germany. The second lowest country, Luxembourg, was more than three times higher than the Irish proportion with a figure of 43.5 per cent.

Italy, considered the European country for machismo, was also well ahead of Ireland in this sector with 51.4 per cent of women workers also wearing wedding rings. Belgium, where traditional attitudes still tend to prevail about male-female roles, came out second top with 65.8 per cent.

The Minister made the point about our not being industrialised for as long a period as Britain and West Germany but he conceded that prejudice does exist against women in industry. We had the case of a transport firm ignoring constitutional law and dismissing nine female workers for the sole reason that they were members of a trade union. A single woman who marries is required to resign or is dismissed from her employment. Wage discrimination is flagrant. In the clothing and shirt making industries the conditions in regard to wages and so on clearly infringe the provisions of the Anti-Discrimination Act. In the case of an ice-cream manufacturing company, while men receive a bonus, women never receive any bonus based on the basic wage.

The White Paper also states that under-employment of women in Ireland is "of considerable proportions and is linked to a kind of `endemic' unemployment, as well as being due to the concept of the `restricted' role played by women in modern society."

To a certain extent this represents the background against which this Bill is introduced and this is therefore a very important and very vital measure. To wait for public opinion to swing to the side of women would be to wait for a very long time for basic justice for 50 per cent of the population. There is advancement in times of labour shortage but there is evidence now to some extent of the old prejudices being reinforced in the face of the unemployment situation.

The Minister is to be congratulated on bringing in this Bill and getting it priority in the heavy programme of legislation awaiting the attention of the House. It certainly is a priority and it is legislation which must be both strong and forceful because of the attitudes against change, which are still there, and which are hardening. Even among workers themselves there may be need to enforce this legislation and so it must be strong and enforceable. Reference was made to the delay in bringing in the Bill. Some of the delay was well worth while because there have been discussions in the interim with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and other organisations which represent women's interests. As a result of representations, consultations and negotiations the Bill has actually been improved and will possibly be improved further as it progresses through the Dáil and Seanad.

Any unnecessary delay in completing its passage would be very regrettable because there are still very definite discrimination factors operating against women and delay would afford an opportunity for those who are not well disposed towards this Bill to conjure up ways and means of nullifying its effects. It is important, therefore, that the Bill be afforded a speedy passage.

Sections 2 and 3 define what constitutes discrimination. It would be discrimination to treat a person less favourably than another because of sex. That is basic to the whole concept of the Bill. It will be discrimination to treat a married person less favourably than a single person of the same sex. That is important. In our labour force 88 per cent of women workers are single and provision must be made to ensure that a single person will not be treated less favourably than a married person. If that is not covered there would be a loophole for discrimination in reverse. This amendment will have to be made on Committee Stage.

Subsection (c) provides:

where a person of one sex is obliged to comply with a requirement, relating to employment or membership of a body referred to in section 4, which is not an essential requirement for such employment or membership and in respect of which the proportion of persons of the other sex able to comply is substantially higher.

This is an excellent provision and a very important one in the context of the Bill. It has been pointed out to the Minister that too narrow limits may constitute discrimination since very many women, certainly a very high proportion of them, leave the labour force to rear children or to look after elderly relatives and we believe provision should be made specifically for these.

Subsection (d) provides discrimination shall occur:

Where a person is penalised for having in good faith—

(i) made a reference under section 15 or under section 7 of the Act of 1974,

(ii) opposed an act which is unlawful under this Act or the Act of 1974,

(iii) given evidence in any proceedings under this Act or the Act of 1974, or

(iv) given notice of an intention to do anything referred to in subparagraphs (i) to (iii),

This is very important and very necessary.

Situations in which it will be unlawful to discriminate are outlined in section 3 (1):

A person who is an employer or who obtains under a contract with another person the services of employees of that other person shall not discriminate against an employee or a prospective employee or an employee of that other person in relation to access to employment, conditions of employment (other than remuneration and superannuation), training or experience for or in relation to employment, promotion or regrading in employment or classification of posts in employment.

Discrimination does go on in all these situations and so the Bill should be of very real value to women working and have far-reaching beneficial effects for them.

Subsection (2) provides:

An employer, shall not have, in relation to his employees or employment by him, rules or instructions which would discriminate against an employee or class of employee.

Much of the discrimination practised is not likely to be lifted in any set of rules or instructions because it has been established and tolerated over the years by actual practice in very many cases by management, workers and trade unions alike. It is important, therefore, to provide that the subsection shall read "rules or instructions or practices which would discriminate against an employee or class of employee".

Section 4 provides:

A body which is a trade union, an organisation of employers or a professional or trade organisation or which controls entry to a profession or the carrying on of a profession shall not discriminate against a person in relation to membership of such body (or any benefits provided by it) or in relation to entry or the carrying on of the profession.

Again this is very important. The Minister stated this can affect eligibility and prospects for employment. We are all familiar with cases where there have been bars, sometimes indeed in the most unlikely places.

The Minister referred to the AnCO training courses and to the fact that they have attracted very few women. The position is improving but the proportion of women is still very low. Those who have availed of them have confined themselves mainly to traditional female skills. I am not surprised this is so. Advice was given to such girls that there were poor job prospects in areas other than those regarded as traditionally female skills. Experience has shown that those who ignored this advice and who were brave enough to venture into new sectors found it very difficult to get employment. The Bill is vitally important in this area. Pilot training schemes for girls in skills regarded as traditionally male should be embarked on simultaneously with the coming into operation of this legislation.

Section 13 is worth while. In addition to the provisions set out in the section it should also be operated to provide for special AnCO training courses. For instance, courses in management should be provided. AnCO training courses in the traditional male skills and also for jobs such as shop stewards and so on could be envisaged under this section and would be a considerable step forward.

Discrimination goes much deeper into the educational system. It is built into the system from the kindergarten upwards. There is the segregation of the sexes, differing school subjects, counselling and so on. The whole system needs a complete overhaul. What is needed is comprehensive legislation but that is not possible under the terms of this Bill.

Section 7 which deals with advertising is important. It states:

(1) A person shall not publish or display, or cause to be published or displayed, an advertisement which relates to employment and indicates an intention to discriminate, or might reasonably be understood as indicating such an intention.

This is a good section but I would question what is meant by the phrase "might reasonably be understood as indicating such an intention". To leave it as vague as this might result in it being interpreted too widely and certainly not to the advantage of women workers.

Section 38 (3) of the United Kingdom Act states that job descriptions with sexual connotations such as "stewardess", "waiter", "salesman" and so on shall be unlawful unless the Act indicates to the contrary. This is an important provision and something on these lines would improve our legislation. The United Kingdom Act also makes it essential to state in the advertisement that both sexes may apply if the job is one that has previously been restricted to male workers only. In this connection the legislators in the United Kingdom were thinking in terms of mechanics, electricians and so on. It was felt that if these provisions were not included girls might be dissuaded from applying for jobs traditionally regarded as male skills. I would ask the Minister to consider this matter between now and Committee Stage.

Section 10 excludes the Defence Forces, the Garda Síochána, the prison service, employment in a private residence or by a minister of religion or a religious community. Personally I do not think a valid case can be made for all these exclusions. With regard to employment by a religious community, the case has been made that this could debar all teachers and nurses from the provisions of the Bill. I presume the Minister will undertake under this section to make orders to include such categories. In relation to the prison service, the Garda Síochána where women are already working, and the whole range of back-up service to the Defence Forces such as telephonists and nurses, the Minister should take action under subsection (2) in relation to this Bill.

Under section 10 (3) the exclusion of appointments under the Civil Service Commission or the Local Appointments Commission is difficult to defend. The commission have a huge volume of work to do. They interview thousands of persons each year and I accept that there might be some difficulty involved. However, that difficulty should be overcome. It is not a sufficient reason for debarring the sections of the labour force from the provisions of the Bill. It appears that there is need for an appeals machinery of some kind for those who feel the recruitment is not as it should be. If possible, such employments should not be excluded from the provisions of the Bill.

Section 11 deals with the right to refuse employment or to dismiss an employee in certain cases. It makes it lawful to refuse employment to a person who will not undertake all the duties and accept all the conditions of the job. I should have thought this could have been dealt with through normal industrial relations procedures. It does not appear to me that there was any need to introduce it into this Bill. By so introducing it we are putting in a rather negative note which is a pity because the Bill is positive in every other respect. As has been pointed out, it may provide a loophole for unscrupulous employers. Before the Bill becomes law such people may introduce new conditions of employment. They may introduce a small element of heavy manual labour into a job where it did not exist and thus make it difficult for a woman to do the job. It is a provision that would be best excluded unless there are very good reasons for its inclusion.

I interpret section 13 as a saver pending the repeal of protective legislation and in that context it appears necessary at this stage. I understand an EEC directive will make it necessary for us to carry out the first revision of this protective legislation before 1980. It is important that once this measure becomes law the first revision should commence. Much of the protective legislation is not necessary in modern conditions and in cases where it perpetuates discrimination against women in employment it should be repealed.

Section 14 deals with the exclusion of posts where sex is an occupational qualification for the post. One can envisage some situations where this provision would be necessary but in other respects it is rather vague. What is meant by a post requiring the characteristics of a particular sex adequately to carry out the requirements of the post? This would be very open to a prejudicial ruling. For instance, 50 years ago only men were thought to possess the characteristics needed to drive a car. Women were considered too frivolous and too indecisive to do many things. There has been a change. There are many posts which women hold today with very great ability, posts for which a few years ago it was considered women did not possess the necessary characteristics. This is a very wide section and is very open to a prejudicial interpretation. It would be an improvement if it could be defined more closely.

I now come to the enforcement sections of the Bill. I believe everybody agrees that the Labour Court should have the central enforcement role. We feel, however, that a special division of the Labour Court should be set up to specialise in cases under this Bill, the Anti-Discrimination (Pay) Bill and any other Acts of a similar nature in relation to employment which may be necessary in the future. Specialisation would avoid varying interpretations. Decisions would be constant and consequent confusion would therefore be avoided. We also feel that the involvement of suitable women in the Labour Court, particularly when dealing with this legislation, is very desirable. I know that there are the ordinary procedures for the appointment of people to those positions. I know they are nominated by the various bodies who are represented on them but I feel a suggestion to the nominating bodies that they might select women, where women are available for such work, would be a step in the right direction particularly in this area.

A special section of the Labour Court set up to deal with all this legislation with women working on it would be a desirable aspect of the working of this legislation. The Labour Court have provision to recommend reinstatement, which is very important. A court process might be of very little use to many of the people affected by discrimination if the power to reinstate were not there. One could envisage a situation where it might be more difficult for a person to secure alternative employment. It is very good that the option to reinstate employees forms part of the provisions of this Bill.

The last thing I want to refer to in relation to the Bill is the very excellent decision of the Minister to make provision on Committee Stage for the establishment of an employment equality agency. He did not announce this for the first time this morning. He announced the setting up of this agency to eliminate the discrimination against women on 15th April, 1976.

He did not announce it in the House or in the Bill.

The Second Stage of this Bill is the first opportunity he has had in the House. The announcement was made on 15th April this year and it was repeated in an announcement regarding the functions of the agency in July, 1976. We have been aware for three or four months that this agency was to form part of the Bill. It is a very important part of the Bill. It will give teeth to it and make it effective for very many people. The Minister said that this agency will be nothing less than the removal of all traces of injustice and inequality in our laws or social arrangements. These are very broad terms of reference. This will be a mammoth task. The agency will have powers to investigate practices which appear to be discriminatory and will have enforcement powers to limit those practices. The agency will be able to issue notices requiring that those discriminatory practices cease. Such orders will be enforced by a court injunction. A very important aspect of the agency is the power to investigate and enforce.

The agency will also have sole rights to deal with discriminatory advertisements, instructions to discriminate and pressure to discriminate. It is very important that it is envisaged that the agency will undertake a programme of education about discrimination in employment aimed at opening up new opportunities and trying to change public attitudes. It is important that we have a simple authoritative body questioning the limitations placed on women in employment. The educational role with regard to the rights of people under this Bill will be very important.

The agency will give women a confidence that their rights are enshrined in law and that they will be upheld. The agency will have an important role to play in questioning the limitations on women because this is something which might not be done by individuals on their own behalf. Much discrimination goes unnoticed and it is important that there is somebody to pinpoint that discrimination, to bring it to light and to eliminate it.

It is desirable that the Bill should contain some provision for its coming into operation as an Act at an early date; for instance, within one month of its passage. I have no doubt that once it is passed the Minister will make an early order to bring it into operation. I would like his assurance that this is exactly what he intends to do. The Bill is a very sincere effort to legislate for fundamental civil rights for women. There will still be problems when it is law. There will be problems in the general area and in the employment area. Until we have women filling two roles, the domestic role and the work role, until we have staggered working hours and a sharing of domestic responsibilities there will be difficulties for women. Women will not be competing on fair terms with men, whatever is enshrined in this legislation. However, the Bill is a very genuine effort to improve the situation for them, to eliminate a great deal of the injustices that still persist.

I look forward to the passage of this Bill through the House, if possible through all Stages this side of Christmas. I look forward particularly to the establishment of the agency which I hope will be ready early in 1977. I understand the difficulties, that one has to be careful, that it is a vitally important agency and that it has to be set up with a great deal of care. However, I hope it will be in operation early in 1977 and that it will be there to monitor progress towards the elimination of all forms of injustice against women in our society so far as employment is concerned. I compliment the Minister on the introduction of this Bill.

In supporting this Bill I see the need to condemn the Minister for the delaying tactics he has used to keep it away from the House for so long. It was first introduced in October, 1975. We wonder if his conservative colleagues in Government influenced him. It is disgraceful that for a Bill as important as this it should take 13 months before we have a chance to debate the Second Stage.

Our aim must be to achieve equality of treatment for women. Men's attitudes are most in need of change and men control the means of change. Therefore, a much greater involvement by women in the political life of the country is vital. Anti-discrimination should and must bring with it equal pay, equal promotional opportunities, equal training and social welfare payments. These are all important areas in which women suffer from serious injustices.

Up to very recently, because of lack of opportunities in education and in training, women were ill-prepared for the exercise of a trade or profession. Women's employment is at present concentrated in certain sectors, mainly the services, and in certain types of less skilled jobs where the wages are lower and the opportunities for women are fewer. The development of the working career of many women is influenced by marriage and by motherhood. Women who wish to return to work after absences for childbirth or child rearing face serious difficulties in getting a job or resuming their careers at the same level as before. In addition, women are often penalised as a result of prejudice. In the eyes of many employers, a woman candidate for a job is a potential absentee. All these things I have mentioned have combined to bring about a situation where the number of women on managerial staff and in decision-influencing positions in public life is very small.

Equal pay for equal work must, of necessity, include work of equal value. Getting the proper rate for the work is only part of the story. We must fight against discrimination in matters of access to employment, promotion, vocational training and equality of working conditions. Women are becoming increasingly aware of the injustices to which they are subjected, and their insistence on being given a fair role in society is the strongest hope for the success of the movement for equality for women. It certainly does not help the women's cause that the growth of this movement is coinciding with the time when the Government find themselves in considerable economic difficulty and faced with serious unemployment. Elimination of discriminations in social welfare will cost money, but we must be on our guard against any suggestion that justice and equality must only prevail in times of plenty, nor should we accept that any particular group in our society should have to carry an unfair share of the hardships. The hardships have to be distributed fairly throughout all sections of the community.

All women welcomed the EEC directive on equality between men and women. The number of employed or self-employed women in the European Economic Community is estimated to be in or around 35 million, and approximately 25 per cent of the working population in Ireland is female. Their work is concentrated in certain types of jobs, usually those requiring a lower level of qualification and this work, consequently, carries lower wages and provides fewer opportunities for promotion. Women resent the discrimination which they suffer and their confinement to a ghetto of what they call "women jobs", and they demand a big change towards greater equality of treatment.

Because of the need to make up for neglect, the achievement of equality may entail—particularly in the short term—expenditure greater than can easily be incurred at a time of economic difficulty. We must remember that short-term expenditure will bring a return in the long term as a result of the provision of competent and flexible labour for the economy and by the contribution which women workers will make to the country's gross national product, to tax revenue, and by way of social welfare contributions. Progress has been made already during a time in which a Fianna Fáil Government were in power.

My colleague, Deputy Fitzgerald, mentioned the fact that Fianna Fáil set up the Commission on the Status of Women. As a result, the range of professions and trades open to women has widened. The level of women's qualifications has been raised, education for girls has improved, and segregation has been reduced. The rate of progress, however, since the Final Report from the Commission on the Status of Women was presented prior to the change of Government in early 1973 is inadequate. The Government, who, after all, have the power to make changes, lay themselves open to reproach when they use the present economic difficulties—as, indeed, they have done—as a reason for postponing the measures needed to achieve full equality.

The setting up of an employment equality agency which the Minister has told us about in his speech today is very welcome and is indeed essential. It will play a very valuable role in assisting the achievement of equal opportunities. The general attitude towards women workers must change and the employment equality agency will help tremendously towards bringing this about. Whether married or single, and whether her wage is the main or a supplementary source of income, a woman still tends to be regarded on the labour market, because she is a woman, with an element of suspicion, and the high proportion of women working in firms on the decline are often the casualties when these firms shut down, particularly in the textile, footwear and clothing industries.

Equality of opportunity within a career is as important as access to a career and the ratio of women at the upper levels of almost any sector of the labour market is not proportionate to the number of women employed. Women are under-represented, particularly at the professional level of employment and, therefore, the improvement of working conditions which would benefit both men and women is essential. It is also a matter of co-operation between workers, their unions and management. It is important that women workers should be effectively represented in the leadership of trade unions in those concerns which employ significant numbers of women, and it is also desirable that managements and trade unions should make every effort to encourage more women to participate in such leadership.

Married women involved in work outside the home are on the increase. Very often the reasons for this are financial. Married couples today are finding it increasingly difficult to live on one person's wage and this has to be supplemented to meet everrising costs. It is here that the working mother faces the most difficult dilemma. She has to decide whether to look after her baby herself, or to arrange for someone else to do so. If we are serious in giving equal opportunities to women, both married and single, we must cater for the many working mothers who urgently need a planned development of day nurseries and crèches. I find no mention of the provision of such facilities in the Bill.

I quote from the report submitted in December, 1972, by the Commission on the Status of Women, the section dealing with day care for children:

Many married women find that they must re-enter employment, or mothers who are ill or hospitalised for any length of time, are faced with the task of finding suitable care facilities for young children. The most satisfactory solution to this problem is where arrangements can be made for parents or other relations to undertake responsibility for them while the mother is working or incapacitated. Frequently, it is not possible for the mother to make this kind of arrangement and she must either try to avail of professional child-minding facilities or else depend on older children to look after the younger ones outside school hours. This latter solution is clearly a very unsafe and unsatisfactory one but representations have been made to us that, in certain areas, it is not an infrequent occurrence where mothers are working and that the responsibility lies with the State and other authorities for not providing suitable crèche and day-nursery facilities where young children can receive skilled care if the mother is forced by economic necessity to resume work. By the term "crèche" we mean a centre where children in good health up to between 2 and 3 years of age are cared for during all or the greater part of a normal working day by qualified, mainly professional personnel.

The report goes on to state:

We do consider, however, that where new housing schemes are being erected, provision should be made for the building of crèches or day-nurseries in the scheme and we recommend that the provision of facilities of this nature should be a condition for the grant of planning permission for such schemes where many women may have an economic necessity to take up part-time work.

I feel very sincerely that, if we are serious about getting rid of inequality as it exists today, we must be serious about the provision of these facilities which are so necessary. Our social welfare system as well must be reformed to ensure equal treatment of men and women, for example, to enable unemployed female school leavers to avail of benefit as their male counterparts do.

While all of us on this side of the House have been pushing for the introduction of this Bill so as to have it processed through both Houses of the Oireachtas without delay, the Minister has made a political football of it. By introducing it many months ago he felt he was satisfying the many women's organisations who have fought so hard for equality, but now we find to our dismay that, not alone had we to wait 13 months before we could debate the Bill but that it will not become effective until the end of 1977. Must we wait another year? Perhaps the Minister would tell us why we have to wait so long, or if, indeed, he does not intend introducing the Committee Stage of the Bill for the next six or seven months.

Rather than getting rid of existing inequality the Minister introduced what I feel was a red herring, and a dangerous one at that, when he announced that he was creating another inequality, this time among women themselves, and I refer to the discrimination against women based on marital status in the public sector. This was disgusting and the Minister must be condemned for it. However, let us look at section 2 of this Bill which reads:

For the purposes of this Act, discrimination shall be taken to occur in any of the following cases—

And clause (b) provides:

where because he is married a married person is treated less favourably than an unmarried person of the same sex.

The opposite prevails at present I believe and the clause could be rephrased to read "where because he is single a single person is treated less favourably than a married person of the same sex". Has the Minister any concept of what social justice means, or is social justice something which he reserves for special occasions such as the famous Labour Party conference in Limerick not so long ago. What have been the utterances of Government Ministers in connection with equality? At the recent Labour Party conference the Tánaiste saw fit to make a speech about policy that would influence society for the next ten years, and he never mentioned women. I quote from a speech which was made by the Vice-Chairman of the Council for the Status of Women at the weekend at which she said as well that the Minister for Labour —who has special responsibility within the Government for women—in his reply at the same conference never mentioned women. The Minister for Finance went further and in some of his usual thinking aloud came up with the bright suggestion that the children's allowance be taken away from mothers. Perhaps the most unkind cut of all was that of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who a few short years ago gatecrashed the Late Late Show to pledge his support for women's rights, and who recently told a Cork audience that whilst the law could not be changed back to bar married women from working they should be "gently discouraged". I wonder what the Minister meant by "gentle discouragement". I wonder if he or the Government or the Minister for Labour are serious at all when they introduce an anti-discrimination Bill in this House when we must gently discourage a section of the community from working.

There are certain exclusions in the Bill which I hope to have an opportunity of clarifying on Committee Stage. The one that comes to mind immediately is that relating to the public sector under section 10, and in particular clause (b) of that section which provides that the Act does not apply to employment in the Garda Síochána. Unless I am very much mistaken there are a fair number of Ban-Ghardaí already employed in this sector of the community. Why allow discrimination to continue here?

There is a real benefit to society in improving the opportunities open to women. Fianna Fáil are totally committed to equality and to ending discrimination of all kinds. I believe our country has an enormous amount to gain from all the talent, the imagination and energy of women which up to the present has not been allowed to develop. While I support this anti-discrimination measure, I urge the Minister to bring the operative date forward from the end of 1977 to the beginning of 1977 if he is interested in ending the many forms of discrimination that are in the labour force.

Despite what Deputy Fitzgerald and Deputy Geoghegan-Quinn have said, I believe the Minister for Labour is to be congratulated on bringing this Bill before the House this morning, and I am certain it will be implemented in the very near future. We all accept that such a Bill is necessary. For whatever historical or social reasons, women have not had the same opportunities heretofore as men. They have been edged out and left aside in the filling of all important posts whether it be at the political, judicial, professional, trade union, employer or any other level. Women have not been allowed to develop their talents to the full or given the opportunities to help to build up this country. This applies to every section of the community and every type of employment.

One is bound to ask whether examination results could supply a reason for this. If one studies the intermediate and leaving certificate results, one will find that over the years females have obtained a greater number of passes and honours results than males. There are reasons for our failure to tackle this problem up to now and why this discrimination has been allowed to happen. Part of it is our very small industrial base. The agricultural sector was our main employer until recently. Opportunities for employment in industry have been small and this is one of the reasons for the limited opportunities for women. Another reason is that there was large-scale female emigration over the years. A great number of young girls emigrated, the majority of them staying away. A small number of them returned and got married. It would be wrong to say that this trend has been reversed; it is continuing. There have been some improvements which would be more obvious in country areas. In country areas there is a greater social consciousness and people are more agreeable to accepting female services, professional or otherwise. They realise that the services being provided are at least on a par with what men are providing. There has been a social awakening but the improvement is slight.

I agree with most of the Bill but the exclusions in section 10 worry me. Subsection (3) reads:

Sections 15 and 17 shall not apply in relation to an appointment to an office to which the Local Authorities (Officers and Employees) Acts. 1926 and 1940 apply, or in relation to an appointment to a position in respect of which a competition under the Civil Service Commissioners Act, 1956, is held.

I represent two counties, Laois and Offaly, and have served on a local authority for ten years. I have reason to visit the local authority office regularly and on one occasion I met a female staff officer. Whether we like it or not, we must accept that it is not accidental that so few women have managed to reach the status of staff officer. A similar situation exists in county councils and health boards. I have never yet met a female county secretary, county manager or county engineer. There is no doubt that it will take a long time to change the situation.

A similar situation applies in regard to the Civil Service Commissioners. I do not know who they are. The Ceann Comhairle is chairman of the commission. There are seven or eight men in charge of the Civil Service Commission and no women. It is not right that the Minister should allow this situation to continue. Other employers can be prosecuted under this Bill and if you want to pursue this matter in the House you can put down a question, but if you try to put down a question in regard to the Civil Service Commission you will be told that it is out of order. I would say I am just on the point of being ruled out of order by the Leas-Cheann Comhairle. I may be pressing my luck in raising this matter put somebody had to say it. The Civil Service Commission cannot be criticised. Public servants are as much entitled to fair play as anybody else. If we do not give a good example and ensure that justice is done, then we have no right to talk about discrimination in other areas. The Minister should tackle this thorny problem. I believe he has the ability to overcome it.

There are a great number of people in domestic service who are not members of trade unions. The current trend is for both husband and wife to work. Until the crèches that Deputy Geoghegan-Quinn talked about are built there will be a need for domestic servants. So many domestic servants are so badly paid that it could be described as slave labour. This morning we talked about people having two jobs, but most domestic servants have one job. The whole area of domestic service should be investigated as soon as possible. If necessary, the Minister should take on extra staff to cope with such an investigation.

Section 5 of the Bill relates to vocational education committees and prohibits discrimination in relation to vocational training. Many vocational education committees have helped in the avoidance of discrimination. They have given good example in this area. It is hoped this will continue. I hope a directive will be issued by the Department to all vocational education committees informing them of the provisions of this section. I also hope that there will be communication with AnCO. All bodies that come under the auspices of this or any other Government Department should be notified of this Bill when it becomes law. It is important that they all know their position in regard to it.

I have received representations from employers, employees and others in relation to some legislation introduced by the Minister in recent times. A number of employers expressed the view that the Government were being very extreme in the introduction of some of this legislation. That did not apply to this Bill where I think the Minister has illustrated a fair balance, illustrating a common-sense approach particularly in regard to section 11. It is an important section and I compliment the Minister on having gone such a long way in meeting people. Section 11 deals with the right of dismissal for failure to carry out all duties a person is obliged to undertake. If a person is not prepared to carry out all of those duties and somebody replaces him it is important that an employer have some redress to ensure that such a person would not be allowed to continue in the job while not carrying out all of his duties.

Section 14 deals with certain exclusions. I have read the Minister's speech, the explanatory memorandum and the Bill itself. Perhaps the Minister would elaborate somewhat on this section in his concluding remarks because I do not know what exactly he has in mind. I suppose he has in mind hospitals and so on but I should be glad if he would clarify the position.

I welcome the Bill. It is a good one but there are some points on which I should like further guidance. I should like the Minister also to consider some of the points I have raised. In relation to any legislation dealing with employment, where one is dealing with human relationships between employers and employees and people's approach in general, one of the best yardsticks to use is common sense and goodwill on all sides. One can have the Statute Book full of legislation but it all boils down to common sense and good will on all sides in such matters.

We should recognise the fact that we are Irish men and women, that we have an obligation to ourselves to discharge our duties whether we be in the position of employer or employee, as befits us, with honesty and pride in our work, in the knowledge that irrespective of who we are or where we are, we have to provide a living for ourselves, set our own standards and ensure that such standards are adhered to. Nobody owes us a living; it is up to us to provide our own. In regard to any legislation it is we who must ensure that it is implemented properly and that applies to all shades of opinion and people in all walks of life. I think the Bill will be a success and I compliment the Minister on its introduction.

I am glad Deputy Enright spoke before me. It would be too bad if, apart from the spokesman on this side, the only Deputies who might contribute would be Deputies Desmond, Geoghegan-Quinn and Deputy Hogan O'Higgins whom I see coming in after me. On that note I should like to make one mild complaint. In recent times in the Dáil we have not known when something is coming up for discussion. It is not good enough to have the spokesman on our side moving around telling us at a late hour when such and such a Bill is coming up for discussion. As in other parliaments, the Government could engage in more efficient planning and arrangement of the times when Bills are to be taken so that those of us who may have an interest will be able to contribute.

First of all, we should not delude ourselves that laws and legislation can cover everything in life. Men and women have useful qualities. They also have defects. Neither sex is superior to the other in that respect. There are areas in which people cannot be as useful as their opposite numbers and vice versa. To cite one example I have come across on numerous occasions—women can make a very significant contribution in the designing of homes in a way that no man really can. But how often has this been recognised? How often do local authorities, builders, developers, architects and so on acknowledge that fact? Yet all of us who have been married for a considerable length of time are well aware of it.

The Bill is confined to women in employment. It is welcome in the sense that it endeavours to set an example in introducing legislation although, as a Deputy on our side has said, it is somewhat late. A commission was set up by the previous Administration a considerable number of years ago. In so far as our society, like many others, is backward and immature, laws alone will not rectify that. It is a good thing that the Bill has been introduced. On a broad front women tend to be discriminated against in all societies. Perhaps this is because of the nature of their role in life. It cannot be easy for a woman who has had, through the nature of things, to go out and earn a living and at a later stage—if she is getting married—to virtually abandon that role and take on the duties of a housewife and mother, the very essential duties of training and educating children apart from looking after her husband. Then, when the children have reached a stage where they no longer need her, she must decide whether she will continue to lead a home life, take up some employment or, perhaps, follow some interest or profession.

The difference here between the role of men and women in society is quite obvious. There is a complete change-about involved for any married woman. Any woman, once she has fulfilled her family duty, if she has not already done so, either has to take up some form of employment or outside interest through which she can contribute to society. Married women should be encouraged to use their natural talents in employment or, if necessary, community work.

Such might apply where economic circumstances do not dictate that she go out to work. I think Deputy Desmond mentioned that where there is only a husband and wife at home it is not that essential for a woman to go out to work. That does not necessarily mean she should be cast in the role of staying in the home indefinitely. The old saying that a woman's place is in the home tends to be overdone and exaggerated.

The motive behind it was that the best person fitted to look after children was and is the woman. That does not mean that we should create an environmental situation where women are told "You ought to be at home". There is no doubt in my mind that there is plenty of evidence that women can be and indeed are as capable as men if they get the opportunity. To a considerable extent women are discouraged from seeking these opportunities. There are many examples in recent times of women who through unfortunate circumstances of one kind or another, where a husband has died, have come out into political life or business life and have made just as significant an impact as their husbands might have done.

In the political area there is a feeling not alone among men but among women that women should not be involved in politics. Any community loses through this. That sort of attiture is perhaps a bit more alive in rural than in urban areas, but even in Dublin it is difficult to get women to join political parties and at the same time I know from my own experience that they are welcome. In the many branches of our organisation, as in other political parties, members are wanted. Recently is has been suggested by some women's organisations that a separate political party should be set up for women and that political parties should be called upon to put forward a proportion of women candidates. My feeling in relation to party politics is that there are not even enough men in active participation, and that the idea of making a separation is not realistic. We should encourage as many young people as possible to get involved in politics and to take an interest in what is happening in their community. It is not realistic to talk about putting forward a proportionate number of women candidates in an election, because in the type of democratic selection that we engage in those who are deciding in convention will decide on whom they believe to be the best candidate. They will not necessarily discriminate against women, except in the sense that in rural areas it is said that a man will get more votes than a woman. That is part of the environment. We cannot legislate for it. All we can do is discourage it.

There are many areas in which women can contribute and they should be encouraged to do so. For example, women can contribute in areas of display, decoration, planning, architecture and advertising. We know that in the professions—science, medicine, law and so on—women are just as capable as men, and we have also seen it in radio, television and in education. We are possibly a little behind the United States in this but we are ahead of many other countries in the world. In page 3 of his speech the Minister referred to the small number of women, particularly, married women, engaged in employment. I do not think it is as bad as that. Many of them would prefer to be at home. I have heard many women say that they would prefer not to hold down jobs when there are many thousands of young people looking for work. Many would say that they would prefer to see their daughter or son working than that they should be keeping one of them unemployed.

Deputy Geoghegan-Quinn mentioned the exclusion of gardaí in section 10. It occurs to me to mention to the Minister that over the past seven or eight years efforts have been made by the Garda to bring to an end this business of having gardaí doing administrative work in Garda stations, preparing summonses, typing out reports and so on. I understand that has been going on and is still going on. It is very necessary that the Garda authorities should encourage it and I wonder how the Minister fits in his exclusion in section 10 with that. Presumably if staff were to be brought in for that kind of work in order to release a garda for more dangerous and arduous work, the Minister would need to make provision for it. Under section 11 an employer may refuse employment. Has an employer the right to decide that a particular type of work, for instance heavy work, could be bad for women and that it could be done more usefully by men?

We will have to learn as we go along, but there are all sorts of areas in which one could draw examples of where one sex or the other can be more effective or more proficient. In the long run, while I welcome the Bill, I would say that it is the maturity of society that will prevail. No person can be compelled to employ a man or a woman in the many different circumstances that exist. The choice, I presume, other than where the State is concerned, must lie with the person providing the job and with the need for performance in any given area.

Mrs. Hogan O'Higgins

I rise to welcome this Bill. We have waited for it for a long time but it is worth waiting for. I would like to see the next Stage of it taken quickly and I would like to see it become law as quickly as possible. There are many reasons why we have the situation in this country that we have where there is a great deal of discrimination against women. The main reason is historical. In this country we tended to hang on to the Victorian era longer than other countries. I remember as a small child that my grandmother used to say "A lady should be seen and not heard". Men of my father's generation were reared with that thought, that a good Catholic mother stayed in her home to bring up her children. We are still suffering to some extent from that attitude. I have always worked outside the home so far be it from me to criticise anybody who does likewise. Married women work generally for economic reasons but also because they have a wish to work outside the home. There is a theory in European countries that once a woman marries she ipso facto becomes a good housewife and mother. Let me say that many of us never make good housewives, whatever about the other attribute. I would say to women who hate housework that they should employ somebody to do those duties for them while they themselves return to their careers.

Deputy Brugha mentioned the question of women in politics. He is right in saying that women are welcome in all political parties. However, it is the case often that young girls are not interested in becoming involved at local branch level. In my constituency which, incidentally, changes for every election, I encourage the young women I meet to become involved in the party. Their reluctance to become so involved, particularly in the past, may have been due in some way to the attitude of male members of political parties who tended to regard women merely as playing the role of teamakers or of writing up minutes. Women complain now that they have little say in politics but the situation has come about by reason of their reluctance to get in and fight their way up. Regardless of what anyone on either side of the House may say, I know that men resent women in politics. I recall an incident in 1965 when a senior Member of this House asked me if I intended recontesting the general election to be held in that year. When I told him it was my intention to go forward again, he asked me if I did not consider Leinster House an unsuitable place for a lady. In reply I told him that I had never had any ambition to be a lady but that I always had held a wish to remain in politics. The idea that ladies do not work is a nonsensical hangover from the Victorian era.

An important aspect of this Bill is that it should result in giving to women an equal opportunity in the field of employment, in giving them equal pay, an equal chance of promotion and equal social welfare rights.

At junior and secondary level education boys and girls now are given more or less the same opportunities and if they are going on to third-level education practically all the professions are open to both men and women. Women can even undertake agriculture on a professional level. Up to now at vocational level the trend was to stream the girls into domestic economy classes but I am glad to note that AnCO are arranging to admit girls to their courses.

In regard to equal opportunity—and this is what I consider to be the most important aspect of this whole subject —girls must accept that if they are receiving equal pay they must be prepared to undertake equal work. I know of a hospital in which equal pay was granted, not to the nursing staff but to other staff, some time ago but where some of the women workers decided that they would not undertake to work at night although they wished to be able to continue to receive equal pay.

I trust that employers will be able to rid themselves of the notion that once a woman marries she will be a liability in some way to the firm because of working time that may be lost as a result of pregnancies. That attitude tends to discriminate against women being employed. Employers should regard all candidates as potential employees rather than to segregate them on a sex basis. Women who find it necessary because of pregnancies to leave work for a short while should be entitled to return to their jobs if they so wish. It is fashionable at the moment to criticise married women for going out to work but even if all the married women who are employed outside their homes were to relinquish their employment, the impact on the employment situation would be very small in terms of the numbers of jobs that would become available for other people.

Another factor in this is that very often the jobs undertaken by married women would not be undertaken by single people. In regard to this whole question we must consider our entire system of education. It is my contention that married women are as much entitled to work as is anybody else. Recently I attended a meeting—it was not political—at which there was expressed much criticism of married women who go to work. Afterwards I spoke to one of the men who had been most vociferous on the subject and, referring to the fact that he had quite a number of daughters, I asked whether he would not wish them to go to work after they had been through university. This man's situation is not such as to warrant his children being eligible for free education at third level. I asked him whether, if any of his girls should marry in her final year at the university, it would be his idea that she should not follow a career. He became quite indignant and said that he would expect them to follow careers after so much money had been spent on them.

Unfortunately, I had not expected this Bill to be before the House this morning so I am not as well prepared for it as I would have wished. In addition to that, I was delayed by bad road conditions which meant that I was not here for the Minister's speech. However, there will be plenty of opportunities during the other Stages of the Bill for us to contribute further.

It is a feature of a period of economic recession that where there are men and women employed in the lower paid jobs, the tendency is to employ men rather than women as vacancies occur. This is particularly noticeable in regard to such categories of workers as waitresses, shop assistants and so on. This is the case also in other countries. A person who holds a senior position in the civil service in Italy told me that this is the case in that country. This sort of discrimination should not be practised. In the lower paid jobs women are to blame in regard to promotion in so far as they are reluctant to assume posts of responsibility.

Recently in my constituency I attended the official opening of a big extension to a factory. On the occasion the management paid much tribute to those girls who had been with the firm from the time of its inception and who were responsible for much of the success of the venture. Afterwards I spoke to the manager who was an American and asked him how many of those girls now held senior jobs with the company. He replied that although the girls had been offered more responsible positions, they had refused to accept them. This attitude indicates a lack of education, a lack of confidence. It is a hangover from the Victorian era that girls are taught to regard themselves as not as adequate, perhaps, as men in employment.

More and more married women are working and they are perfectly entitled to work for whatever reasons, but they should provide, where they can afford it, an adequate child-minding service for themselves. Many parents—both working in good jobs, as Deputy Enright said—do not provide this and they could do so out of their own resources. I realise that women working because of necessity and because money is very scarce are not able to pay somebody to look after the children and that the State has a certain duty to provide some type of day centre or crèches. The larger factories should also provide these facilities. Many of the large industries are making enormous profits and the small cost of providing a day centre or crèche would be well worth while. They would gain happier employees and in the long run this would benefit the industry.

I do not agree with Deputy Enright that domestic help is very badly paid —he should be looking for it. They are practically a dying race, which is a tremendous pity. There is some stupid snobbery about this. Girls should train in domestic skills and go into these jobs which are very well paid, as I know from people who have been in touch with me in an effort to get help. Because of the snob attitude domestic jobs are not on. In fact there are some very interesting jobs for girls in that area. If you employ somebody to look after your children while you are at work there should be an income tax allowance. There is not at present. There is a housekeeper's allowance for a man, but not for a woman who is working, unless she is a widow. I think that is the situation. It is not unusual to pay £20 to £35 per week for domestic help and there is no income tax allowance for this. There should be. If you class a girl as a secretary, the expenses would be allowed against wages. If she were working in an office or on the factory floor there would also be allowances but not in domestic employment or home help employed in the house. This position should be examined.

It is incredible that in this day and age there should be discrimination between men and women in the social welfare field. Mark you, I have reservations here. I do not think that school leavers of any age should get unemployment assistance. It tends to keep them on the dole and discourage them from seeking work. The young people all think they should start at the top. I think if they did not have social welfare they would take any sort of job and make "a go" of it if they were any good. At present they seem to think they must start at the top or they will not take the job. This is a mistake. I think it is wrong to give unemployment assistance to either boys or girls in the first year of their leaving school. It tends to encourage them to idle and this is not what we want in this society.

We have reached a situation where we have a sort of equal pay system but it discriminates between one woman and another, married and single. This will have to be rectified. I sympathise with the Minister because, having made these promises which I really believe the Government meant to carry out, things in the economic field did not turn out as hoped and we are in an economic recession at present. But that does not—nothing does—justify discrimination, and every effort must be made despite the recession to give equal opportunities to men and women.

Discrimination against the female sex for so long has resulted in the vocal element being extremely vocal and they can do themselves a certain amount of harm. In England women now feel that the "women's libbers" have done a great deal of harm. Now when they become divorced and have better-paid jobs than their husbands, they have to pay their husbands alimony. Also, in England, a woman's job must be held for her for a year after a pregnancy and this discourages employment of married women. This is why we must have a sense of balance. "Women's libbers" should not go too far and leave women at a disadvantage again so that they would be not only calling the tune but paying for it also.

I have never believed in "women's lib" to any great extent, as I have said over and over again. I do not believe in separate societies; I believe in an integrated society. I believe that men and women complement each other and work very well as a team. Because of the natural bias in society against women, women who get into well-paid jobs work about 25 per cent harder than men to prove their worth because all the time there is this bias against a woman and she must go on proving that she is as valuable to her employer as a man. Deputy Geoghegan-Quinn will probably agree with me in thinking that women politicians have to work 25 per cent harder to get the same number of votes. They start under a handicap and so must be that bit better than the men to be elected. No male Deputy will admit this.

I am not happy about some things in the Bill but, as it goes on, I trust we shall be able to clarify it. Section 10 has been mentioned and I am also not happy about section 14 and another section. On Committee Stage, I am sure it will be clarified and we can say more on the subject. I should like the Bill to get a speedy passage and become law as soon as possible. We can discuss Bills here and make fine speeches on them but they must get out of the House and on to the Statute Book and become law, before anything is done about them. That is why it is so important to take the Committee Stage as soon as possible.

I intend to be brief but as this is an important measure I shall not deal flippantly with it. First, while I support the principles of the Bill, it is rather a reflection on our society that we must bring in this legislation. The Government are somewhat tardy in introducing the Bill. It has been so long on the stocks that we thought, it had been forgotten. It may well be that only for Deputy Fitzgerald's pertinent questions, which seemed to have reactivated Government interest in the measure, we would not be dealing with it even now. I look forward to the Committee Stage to go more fully into the subject matter. I shall only speak for a few minutes today.

The viewpoint of my generation was that any legislation must guarantee and enshrine the dignity of women. In this city things were much worse than they are now and we saw many a mother being forced out to work in order to rear a family after the loss of the breadwinner. The system we want is, first of all, something to prevent discrimination, in the way that a woman is discriminated against when she loses her husband and has a family and to augment the State subsidy she has to go into industry to earn a living. I would welcome any legislation which would ensure that no mother of a family is forced into industry and commerce not because she wants to go but because the system we have may well force her out. At present she does stand the chance of being discriminated against. She has already been discriminated against, despite what has been done over the years through children's allowances and widow's pensions which I am glad to say my party introduced. We are driving on all the time to ensure that we will guarantee and protect the dignity of women and particularly of mothers so that they will be able to stay at home if they wish in order to rear their families. If a woman decides to go into industry or commerce we must ensure that she will get equal pay for her equal work. I stress that it is totally immoral that any woman would be denied an adequate salary because she is a woman.

On the other hand I saw a scene in the city here recently where a woman was delivering stuff from a van and to my mind that woman was not quite able to lift the vessel she was trying to carry. I thought that there was something wrong when that woman was struggling with that vessel —I do not know what it contained. She may have been drawing equal pay with the man who was used to the work or she may not.

I do not think this Bill is going to improve women's opportunities of employment. It has to go much further. We should drop our patronising attitude towards women. The Minister in his brief said:

A policy for the greater involvement of women in managerial positions must be developed. I do not believe that managerial ability is concentrated exclusively in the male sex.

Did anybody ever believe that?

Of course they did.

Some of the best managers were women and they are still.

The fact that women are not in managerial positions proves that many people in Ireland believe precisely what I have stated.

The Minister is forgetting history. History has proved that women are just as intelligent as he and I are.

I am not disputing that.

The Minister is being patronising.

I think the Deputy misunderstands what I say.

It reads that way. The Minister says that he does not believe that managerial ability is concentrated in the male sex. Managerial jobs may be but not ability. Therefore I think he is being patronising. However, I do not want to hold up the Minister but I will come back to this on Committee Stage.

We have had a pretty good discussion on some of the provisions of this legislation. I might make the point that there has been, perhaps, an unnecessary and excessive sounding of party drums in this area, perhaps excessive claims made about the policy superiority of the Opposition Party by contrast with the record of the Government. I do not know if this is of very great interest to people concerned with the advancement of women in our society. It is to be deplored that legislation of this character should meet with that kind of reception.

I must initially dispose of one matter. The record suggests that before 1973 nothing—I stress nothing —was done in the legislative area to advance the position of women in Irish society. The point has been made that the Commission on the Status of Women were set up in 1970. The point is forgotten that they made an interim report in 1971.

On equal pay.

On equal pay— that the final report of the commission was dated 1972, and that the interim report of 1971 asked that there be a phasing-in of equal pay. Despite this, when this Government came to office in 1973 we found, when we opened up the filing cabinets to see what prepatory work had been got under way, that nothing was in preparation, despite the fact that the then Administration had been preparing for over a decade for entry into the European Community in which legislation relating to women's equality has been on the Statute Book for many years before we jointed the Community.

It was well known to the Administration then negotiating entry to the Community that equality for women was important social legislation in fundamental legislation of each one of those European countries. Yet no legislative preparation had been got under way over the 16 years of that Administration's term in Government. I do not know if this kind of point-scoring on a rather serious area is of much interest to us——

The Minister has not scored yet.

——but excessive time was taken up with this kind of pious platitudinising that we heard this morning from members of the Opposition. It is hard when you understand that you are a member of a dead Administration which began to legislate in the area as against the ideals, protestations and agreements, which were all we had——

Let the Minister get to the Bill.

——prior to 1973. We have disposed of this type of partisan area which took up an excessive amount of our time this morning on this legislation.

I do not think we can ignore the importance of law in this area or that we can exaggerate it either. This legislation deals with the position of women in employment, their access to training and measures to ensure that there will be no form of discrimination after its passage, and that no unfair practices will exist. It will also assist, I would hope, to bring about the required change in public attitudes. I believe in this area of legislation that until we change our Constitution it cannot be said that we have totally eliminated in our legislation discrimination against women. The confessional character of the Constitution— and here I refer in particular as I did in my opening speech, to Article 41 of the Constitution relating to woman's place in the home and to the position of the family, to the non-dissolution of marriage—has been criticised before, and rightly so, in an island where men and women are murdered because of fanatic hatreds fed in part by misconceptions of the role of religion. I would like a Constitution which favours no branch of the Christian belief over another, a Constitution whose fundamental provisions would be impartial as regards the particular witness of any one Christian religion. To give an illustration of my meaning, I would favour the secular Constitution of 1922 over what I see increasingly as the confessional Constitutional of 1937.

Speaking of the place of legislation in the general advance of women in our society, it cannot be said that the legal status of women in Ireland is secure as long as the 1937 Constitution continues in operation. That Constitution reflects in its various provisions—and I mentioned Article 41— a narrow view of woman's role which even in 1937 owed much to a narrow 19th century Catholic social theory on women and their place in society. Even then those who drew it up were ignoring the work of the more advanced Catholic social theorists who were working at that period in the thirties. It is ironic that while the authors of the narrow irredentist 1937 Constitution were at their work and confining women to the narrow role in society spelled out in the Constitution, a woman of the stature of Simone de Veil was working extending the frontiers of human consciousness trying to describe a new human understanding of God and creation.

I have no doubt that the equality employment agency, which will be set up under this legislation in 1977, will be considering very early the provisions of the 1937 Constitution and will be working on the need for changing that Constitution. I have no doubt that on Committee Stage we will be mentioning this aspect of the agency's work. Reference was made to the delays in establishing that agency. The Committee Stage amendment which will set up that agency will be in length almost equal to the Bill now before us. I had the choice of introducing a separate Bill dealing with the equality employment agency but thought it better to keep it connected with this Bill. A great deal of the so-called delay that Deputies have been concerned about relates to the preparation of that legislation and consultation with interests involved. I will be having consultations with the women's representative committee whose chairman, Deputy E. Desmond, contributed this morning, on the staffing and operation of that agency and I will also have consultations with other women's organisations. That agency will be a permanent guarantor that the status of women in our society will continue to receive attention.

It has also been said that it will take a year to establish this agency. That happens to be a description of the factual position but I will be disappointed if the agency is not in operation within the first six months of next year. I accept that this is easier said than done because a great deal of consultation still has to be gone through and there is the question of staffing the agency.

It was said that during the Labour Party Conference no reference was made to women in the labour debate. We had many important matters to discuss in Limerick and we wished to make arrangements for the continuation of the reform programme and it took some time before the arrangements were made and the democratic decision taken.

And there were diverse views expressed.

The House is aware of the satisfactory conclusion reached at that conference. In the labour debate I had only ten minutes to reply. I used my time to refer to another very important subject, namely, the incomes position. I did not refer to any legislation under any heads in my reply. That was the sole reason that there was no reference. I referred solely to the problems we had of negotiations with unions and employers.

As I said, there was apparently some misconception that this legislation would not be coming into effect for a year. I do not know how this misconception arose; it may have been because of misunderstanding of the reference in my Second Reading speech to my hope of seeing the equality employment agency in operation before the end of 1977. As I explained, I will be very disappointed if it is not in operation in the first six months of next year.

As soon as this Bill goes through all Stages here and is passed in the Seanad, it will be immediately operational. In other words, I hope to see this legislation incorporated in the early months of next year. With the co-operation of the House I hope we can get through all Stages while permitting as many helpful additions as possible to be made as it progresses through the various Stages. I hope we get a speedy passage for this legislation on which there is no disagreement on principle.

Reference was made to the equal pay controversy. For the record I would like to be factual about that decision. I was asked by the two sides of a specific sector of industry to delay implementation of the equal pay legislation. I referred that request to the Labour Court because the request was based on the feeling of the two sides in the shoe industry that unemployment would follow the implementation of the legislation. I asked the court to investigate whether a genuine problem existed in relation to unemployment and the legislation and they reported that, in their opinion, it did and that there was a genuine case. It was in reply to that joint request for action that I introduced the amendment last year.

What about the public sector?

I am talking about the amendment I brought into this House.

The Minister was talking about equal pay.

I forgive other members of his party who do not know the facts because not many people know the facts in this area.

Will the Minister adjourn the debate?

Before we adjourn may I ask a question? When will we resume this debate?

I hope we can take Committee Stage on 8th December.

But we have not finished the Second Stage.

Debate adjourned.
Business suspended at 1.30 p.m. and resumed at 2.30 p.m.
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