Will new pay transparency rules close the gender pay gap for good?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello, I'm Ciarán Hancock. Welcome to Inside Business. This week I'll be looking at the EU's new paid transparency directive and what it will mean for Irish employers and their workers. In the second half of the show I'll be talking to Irish Times Washington correspondent Keith Duggan about the new Governor of the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh. Will he be his own man or a patsy for Donald Trump's economic agenda?
What are the details of the new EU pay transparency directive?
First to pay transparency. A new EU directive requiring employers to slow salary ranges in the workplace and toughen rules enforcing gender pay equality comes into effect on June 7th. However, Ireland is set to miss the deadline with no draft legislation in place. Nicola Harkin is Head of Employment Law Services at Employers Group IBEC and she joined me in studio to explain how the new rules will work. I began by asking Nicola to explain the key elements of the new EU pay legislation and what it will mean for Irish employers and their staff. Here we go.
So the Pay Transparency Directive, really the aim of it is to work towards achieving better gender equality across the EU. And within it, there's a range of provisions and I probably bucket them into the more straightforward provisions and the very complex provisions. So in the straightforward bucket... There's a couple of provisions around pre-employment rules, around recruitment, around the provision of job salary information, either in the job ad or prior to interview or otherwise prior to employment. Rules around prohibition of pay secrecy clauses and rules prohibiting employers from asking candidates about current pay or previous pay history. And then in the probably more administratively burdensome provisions are a lot of provisions around the idea of evaluating all of the work within your organisation and carrying out this job evaluation exercise, which will categorise all of your workers into work of equal value.
And that, you know, within itself will then, I think, create, that's where the real work is for employers in preparing for this directive.
Yeah. Now, this directive is supposed to commit to force on June 7th, but Ireland isn't going to meet that deadline, is it?
It doesn't look like it, no. I mean, the pay transparency bill wasn't included in the priority list for the summer 2026 legislative programme. It is in the programme, but not on the priority list. So, I mean, it's unlikely, but really impossible to see we're a week out, how it could come in on time. But we're certainly not alone on that. And in fact, most member states will be late in transposing the directive. And I think that's probably reflective of the complexity of the directive and the complexity of really bringing some of those legal provisions into practice. I think the delays across the EU on implementation of the directive is probably reflective of that.
Okay. So how many companies are members of IBEC?
We have about 7,000 companies from across different sectors, small, medium, large organisations. So a huge range of membership within IBEC.
So how prepared are they for this new legislation?
Well, I think what we're seeing from our members is a real desire to be prepared.
Why is Ireland missing the deadline for the pay transparency legislation?
But in the absence of a lot of the legal certainty to be fully prepared, there's only so much they can do. We haven't seen draft legislation yet. The directive says that member states need to provide guidance and toolkits to employers to help them to prepare for the directive. We haven't seen that yet. from the department yet. We've seen one toolkit come from a European institution around gender equality. So there's still a lot that we don't know. So while organisations are working very hard, we know organisations are putting a huge amount of time, resources and financial investment into preparing for the patron transparency directive. The reality is, in the absence of certainty and legal certainty about exactly what they must do to prepare,
There's only so much they can do and there's a lot that remains to be seen before they can finalise any sort of preparations for the directive.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:02–0:24
2
What are the details of the new EU pay transparency directive?
0:24–3:07
3
Why is Ireland missing the deadline for the pay transparency legislation?
3:07–4:13
4
What are the key elements of the EU pay legislation for employers?
4:13–16:18
5
How prepared are Irish companies for the new pay transparency rules?
16:18–22:56
6
What changes will employers need to make in job advertisements?
22:56–28:55
Speakers
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