I welcome this opportunity to draw attention to the fact that the Irish Government have reported to the EEC Commission in Brussels on the progress in Ireland on the implementation of equal pay. I want to call for the publication of the contents of that report. I welcome the fact that the Minister for Labour is here to respond to the debate and I hope he will accept the importance of publicising and making available the contents of the report.
The material in the report is undoubtedly interesting to the EEC Commission. Indeed the Commission has a legal function under the EEC Treaty to ensure observance by member states of their obligations under the Treaty itself and under specific regulations and directives. However interesting and important it may be to the EEC Commission it is of even more interest to citizens here, and in particular to women workers, to know in what from and in what way the Government reports on the progress—or perhaps lack of progress—on implementation of equal pay. The obligation to file a report flows from the Directive 75/117/EEC on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to the application of the principle of equal pay for men and women. This Directive was passed on 10 February 1975 during the period of the Irish Presidency. Article 8 of the Directive provides as follows:
1. Member States shall put into force the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary in order to comply with this Directive within one year of its notification and shall immediately inform the Commission thereof.
2. Member States shall communicate to the Commission the texts of the laws, regulations and administrative provisions which they adopt and feel covered by this Directive.
Article 9 is the relevant provision here. It provides as follows:
Within two years of the expiry of the one-year period referred to in Article 8 Member States shall forward all necessary information to the Commission to enable it to draw up a report on the application of this Directive for submission to the Council.
Clearly the Commission intends at some stage in the near future to compile an overall comparative report for the Council, and that is the purpose of the questionnaire which was sent to Government Departments here and also to the social partners. That overall report is a very useful and important exercise for the Commission to carry out in fulfilling its obligations under the treaty to ensure observance of this Directive. However, the important thing from the point of view of Irish citizens, and in particular of women workers in this country, is to have immediate access to the Irish Government's evidence reporting on implementation of equal pay.
The Government are under a legal obligation to implement equal pay. They have compiled a report in response to the Commission's questionnaire, but the material contained in that report is not secret, is not something that the Government should be trying to hide or that the Government should in some way be trying to put under the table or disguise from citizens. It should be available for comment and reaction from women workers themselves, from women's organisations, from trade unions, from citizens generally. This is very important, to ensure that we have accountable and democratic procedures here, but also that we remove a sense of remoteness and unaccountability from the European Community process of operating.
The Minister in his reply may try to suggest that this report is in an internal document of the European Community and should not be available here. In fact, it is already very widely available here which is another of the anomalies in the situation. I have a copy to which I am going to refer. Also, it was commented on in an article in The Irish Times on 24 May under the heading “Progress Slow on Equal Pay” and I am going to indicate good ground for that particular heading because I think the report does show slow progress on equal pay and a considerable number of gaps in our knowledge.
So, the report is informally circulating in the country. My submission is that it should be published and available. The contents of the report should be set out together with the questions that were being responded to, because without the actual questions in the questionnaire the report is less valuable. It should be prepared in a form suitable for publication together with the material in the various annexes which are referred to in the report.
Whatever the attitude taken by other member states as to whether they will publish their particular reports in response to the Commission's questionnaire, there is a special case for publication in Ireland. We started off on a very bad footing here in January 1976, when the Anti-Discrimination (Pay) Act was to have come into effect, in that we sought a derogation from the principle of equal pay. The Coalition Government tabled an amending Bill and when it failed to get legal authority to derogate from the principle of equal pay that Bill was subsequently withdrawn. Undoubtedly the result was that there was a smokescreen of confusion, and advantage was taken of this by a number of employers and, indeed, in some instances by unions.
There was a great deal of understandable confusion among women workers as to whether or not they were entitled to equal pay. I have never endorsed that particular step of the then Government and I do not intend to now. The situation was that there was considerable confusion as a result. In June 1976 I tabled an Adjournment motion criticising the then Government for lack of publication of the right of equal pay, how it could be sought by women workers, the fact that it should be contained in any collective agreements and so on.
Therefore, in Ireland we have to redress a situation where confusion had already been created, and where in any case the position of women is more serious than in the other member states. These, I think, are very strong grounds for arguing the need to publicise a report of this sort so that it could be available for comment.
The report does not, I think, contain anything particularly new. It is a compilation of information from various sources. But the fact that it is the Government's attempt to discharge its legal obligations in the implementation of equal pay makes it particularly interesting and important that it be publicised as such. The question of whether the Government satisfy their legal obligations is matter that should be commented on both in debate in the Oireachtas and by Irish citizens generally and in reports in newspapers and articles and so on.
I would like to look at some interesting aspects of the report. For example, on page 4 there is a table of the number of cases referred to the equality officers in the years 1976, 1977, 1978—up to the 12 February—which is the final date on which the report is based. That is when the two-year period in the Directive is completed. It refers to the fact that:
...in 1976, 40 cases were referred to the equality officers. In 1977, it was 64 cases; in 1978 up to 12 February it was ten cases, making a total of 114 cases. In that period 32 cases were withdrawn or settled. The number of recommendations issued by equality officers was 25.
There are several striking questions that arise from this table. Why were there so few cases referred to the equality officers in 1976 and 1977, given the very wide prevalence of discrimination against women workers in the private sector, given the number of women workers who would have a claim if the claim were to be brought?
What happened to the 64 cases which were neither recommended upon by the equality officers nor withdrawn or settled? What kind of time-lag is there?
