The Department of Agriculture has reported a gender pay gap of 8.05 per cent for last year, down by 1.65 per cent on the year before.
In its gender pay gap report for 2024, just published, the department says it continues to take action to reduce the gap but says progress has been made to date with a gap of 20.5 per cent having existed when it first assessed pay by gender in 2013.
Men and women in the Civil Service, as elsewhere, must be paid the same amount for doing the same work and what the figures in gender pay gap reports, based on hourly averages paid to men and women respectively, tend to indicate is the disparity in numbers of men and women at different levels of organisations.
In a majority of government departments women make up more than half of the workforce but they tend to be over-represented in more junior roles and underrepresented in the most senior ones.
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In the Department of Agriculture, men account for 51.1 per cent of the workforce and form a majority of both the lowest and highest paid cohorts of workers – but they make up 58.3 per cent of the latter group as opposed to 51.65 per cent of the lowest paid group. This, the department said in its report, “shows that there is still a greater proportion of men at more senior levels within the department”.
Women comprise a majority in only the lower-middle grouping, making up almost 60 per cent of the nearly 1,000 people in that quartile.
[ Gender pay gap at The Irish Times narrows to less than 1%Opens in new window ]
The department’s report is the last to be published for last year by the 18 Government departments and the 13th to record progress on the issue since 2023.
In a number of instances, the reductions to GPG figures are quite modest but the Department of Finance’s reported pay gap of 4.3 per cent was down from 10.6 per cent a year earlier while the Department of Justice’s went from 5.3 per cent to 1.3 per cent.
The Department of Environment’s was 7 per cent, down from 10.3 per cent.
Just one of the 18 departments – the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth – recorded a gap that favoured women. It reduced from -5.2 per cent to -3.5 per cent.
Three departments, meanwhile, Education; Further and Higher Education; and Tourism recorded increases to their GPGs.
The Department of Transport’s gender was unchanged at 13.7 per cent. A substantial gender imbalance among professional and technical staff was, it said, a factor in the number being high.
The Department of Rural and Community Development, meanwhile, only reported for the first time last year having previously been exempt from the requirement on the basis of its employee numbers.
In 2022 the CSO put the gender pay gap across the entire economy at 9.6 per cent.
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