Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 13 December 2022
61. Deputy Jennifer Carroll MacNeill asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the progress that has been made to date with the ratification of International Labour Organization Convention on Violence and Harassment, 2019 (No. 190); the next steps envisaged in advance of ratification; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [57496/22]
View answerI wish to ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment to update the House on the progress that has been made to date with the ratification of the International Labour Organization Convention on Violence and Harassment, noting the Cabinet decision at the end of last month to progress that and the next steps in advance of ratification.
Violence and harassment in the workplace are unacceptable and undermine the principles of human rights. We have comprehensive legislation in Ireland to protect against this and the International Labour Organization, ILO, convention sends a clear signal to workers and employers that every workplace must be free from harassment and violence.
I was committed to Ireland being an early ratifier of this convention. I am particularly pleased that we have met the timeline to ratify this convention before the end of 2022 in line with the Minister for Justice's new zero-tolerance action plan on domestic, sexual and gender-based violence.
Since the Government approved its ratification on 29 November 2022, my Department has engaged with the Department of Foreign Affairs and the ILO to arrange the signing of the instrument of ratification by the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the depositing of the treaty with the ILO in Geneva. We expect to complete the process by the end of 2022.
The ILO is unique in the UN system with governments, workers and employers working together to promote decent work and advance social justice. I thank IBEC and ICTU for their work on this. The strong relationship we have with employer and employee representative bodies is fundamental to our ability to play an active role within the ILO.
The world of work has altered so much since 1923 when Ireland, as a new State, joined the ILO, its first international organisation. I am pleased that Ireland, through ratification of this ILO convention, is taking a strong stand against violence and harassment in the workplace.
The Tánaiste's response is very welcome, particularly as it is in tandem with the implementation of the third strategy under the Department of Justice. I know the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment conducted a stakeholder consultation on it. I am interested in the tenor of some of the responses that came back and the extent to which they highlighted gender harassment and sexual harassment within the workplace. It is quite striking that the convention leads so strongly with gender-based violence and harassment disproportionately affecting women and girls and how difficult that can make working life for them. We have heard from victims of sexual harassment that when it happens in the workplace, it is so often a surprise and it is so often that the victim simply freezes and cannot believe it has happened in what should be a safe space - the place they go to work. Women in particular face a spectrum of sexual harassment but for that to occur in the workplace where they must go every day, albeit sometimes remotely now, makes life extremely difficult.
The convention is a legal instrument that recognises the right of everyone to a world of work free from violence and harassment, including gender-based violence and harassment as well. It acknowledges that gender-based violence and harassment disproportionately affects women and girls. The convention calls for states to recognise and address this as far as is possible and to minimise the effect of domestic violence and harassment at work.
The introduction of domestic violence leave by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth goes beyond what is required by the convention and does represent tangible action by the Government in this regard. Ratification of the convention is listed as a deliverable in the implementation plan for the third national strategy on domestic, sexual and gender-based violence. Other actions in that strategy provide an excellent response to C190's requirements in respect of victims of gender-based violence and harassment in the world of work.
The timing of this is wonderful because the Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality, in which the Tánaiste participated at an earlier stage, will publish its report on Thursday, 15 December on ending gender stereotyping, in particular, in Ireland. So much of this, as the convention recognises, comes from what has been an unequal gender-based power relationship for many years. I would suggest that the Department could lean into the Department of Education in respect of its programme on relationships and sex education, which is really the only way to effect long-term inter-generational change - a cultural change - of the kind that is necessary to disrupt those unequal power relationships, which form the basis for so much of gender and other harassment but particularly gender harassment.
We will certainly do that. We are keen to work across government and different Departments to get this right and make some real changes in these areas. One of the things I have been pleased to be involved in in the past number of years is increasing the number of women on State boards and company boards. We have made real progress in that regard. It is more or less 50:50 or 45:55 on State boards and well over 30% on the boards of listed companies. Where it is still pretty weak is at the C suite - CEO, CFO and CPO. Boards are much better while leadership positions are really not great. These things will only fundamentally change in the workplace if there is an equal number of women in those senior positions in the first place. That is not to say men cannot be harassed by women but it is much less likely to occur. Again, it is something that is very much on the agenda.
