I am thankful for the opportunity to speak about International Women's Day. I congratulate Jessie Buckley for becoming the first Irishwoman to win an Academy Award for Best Actress. Her success is a powerful reminder Ireland continues to perform strongly on the global stage but while we celebrate achievements like that, we must also look inward and ask whether the systems and structures here at home are truly setting women and girls up to succeed. I am concerned there is a narrative taking hold that the progress we have made on gender equality is enough because I do not believe it is. Progress is not something we achieve once and keep forever; the gains we make must keep evolving or they stop being gains at all. For many women it is not getting easier but harder. Families are facing enormous pressures due to the cost of childcare, the availability of it, the cost of staying at home and the cost of returning to work. Parents find themselves performing constant solution-gymnastics, especially in the first year of a child’s life as they try to make childcare, employment and family finances work. We have to make the system evolve with the times to keep up with gender equality and make it work for families. The motherhood penalty remains very real. Women experience an average earnings drop of around 27% after their first child is born and that statistic alone should make us pause but it is even more concerning that gender inequality is beginning earlier than motherhood. Research from the Growing up in Ireland study has identified a sizeable gender pay gap already among 25-year-old men and women and that is largely driven by the sectors they enter. Women are far more likely to work in education- and health-related fields while men are more likely to work in higher paying sectors such as industry, information and communications technology, finance and real estate. Of course we should support young women to enter higher paying sectors but that cannot be the whole solution. If we are serious about gender equality we must also encourage young men to enter care-related professions. Our country already faces workforce challenges in areas such as social work and therapies, education and disability services and bringing more men into those professions would benefit not only gender equality but the sustainability of those essential public services. One of the most powerful ways to unlock gender equality is by degendering care roles both in the workplace and the home. One of the clearest ways to do that is normalising the taking of parental leave by fathers and normalising flexible work. Although progress has been made, the figures show there is still a long way to go. According to the reply to a parliamentary question I recently asked, a quarter of men are still not taking paternity leave and about a third are not taking parents' leave. A big reason for that is the financial hit. International evidence shows the difference father's leave can make. Research in Sweden found each additional month a father spends on parental leave increases the mothers earnings by about 6.7%. When fathers take leave mothers return to work earlier and the gender pay gap narrows. We are also seeing it is not just fathers who cannot afford to take leave as mothers also choose not to take parents' leave. This correlates with the number of women who do not get an uplift in their maternity leave, so women are stuck in a catch-22 situation. If they want to return to work, they may not be able to secure childcare or if they want to stay at home longer, they cannot afford to, so parental leave must be financially viable for both mothers and fathers. At present, Ireland’s maternity benefit replaces less than a third of average earnings. This is one of the lowest rates in Europe and the only system that still provides a flat rate payment. This must change. We should also move towards pay-related maternity, paternity and parental leave as outlined in the programme for Government. Our family leave system must work harder for hardworking parents. Another important step is expanding access to flexible work. At present employees who are parents or carers can request flexible working arrangements under the work life balance Act. The legislation also requires a review by March 2026, to include whether the right to request flexible work should be extended to all employees. I take this opportunity to ask the Minister of State where that review stands, what the timeline for it is and whether the Government will commit to expanding the right to request flexible work to all employees. We have the directive on pay transparency and also the gender pay gap legislation. We have to make sure that the information about the gender pay gap is made available to people on the portal as soon as possible, so people are able to see which companies are delivering and which are not, and where we need to focus our attention.

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