Nicola Harkin

So what we will be saying to government is...

It's not necessary to gold plate the directive in those terms and it's sufficient to ensure that candidates... So you're lobbying against that?

We are lobbying against it having to be in the job act.

That hasn't been decided upon.

Well, the idea is to be transparent with your workforce about the pay, not necessarily be transparent with all of society or, you know, other businesses about pay.

And the purposes of it is pay transparency for the purpose of achieving gender equality.

That's the purpose of the directive.

So that's why we have to really see what are the aims of the directive.

And then make sure our national legislation are meeting those terms.

See, in the Netherlands, they've just published draft legislation, I think today or in the last day or so.

And they have said that the information around salary levels will have to be given to candidates prior to the interview.

They're not suggesting that needs to be in the job ad itself.

So that's not something that we're seeing being included in all of across the EU.

So I think, again, as I say, for IVEC and its members, that's a bit of a red line.

Not in the job ad, no.

Exactly.

And actually, the directive itself does recognise that rights to privacy still exist.

So this pay transparency directive does not entitle John to find out what Mary is earning.

The information that needs to be given to employees is around their own individual pay levels, which you'd hope they would know, and the average pay levels within the category of worker in which they are sitting.

So it's not entitling employees to find out what particular employees or candidates are earning or could earn for a particular role.