The Minister for Public Enterprise has ordered equality audits in all semi-state companies answerable to her Department.
Ms O'Rourke has also confirmed Cabinet approval for the payment of £400,000 awarded to four women clerical workers in the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA), who were denied equal pay with male colleagues for nine years.
Ms O'Rourke met the four women yesterday and congratulated them on their award. "When the award was announced I was determined to meet you," she told them at a champagne reception in her office.
Ms Monica Lyons, Ms Anne McCarthy, Ms Mary Doohan and Ms Kathleen Campbell were awarded almost £100,000 each by the Labour Court 10 days ago. It was the largest equal pay award in the history of the State.
Ms O'Rourke said there was no question of appealing the award. "It's going to be paid. It's bad enough that they had to wait so long for it."
The IAA has confirmed there will be no appeal to the High Court, and said arrangements were being made for early payment.
It also said it had had equal opportunity programmes since 1994, and that no discrimination or victimisation currently exists at the Ballygirreen weather station offices in Shannon, where the cases were initiated in 1989.
The Minister said she appreciated the way in which the IAA had responded to the problem.
The general secretary of the Civil and Public Service Union, Mr Blair Horan, said the gesture "will send a clear message throughout the country" on equal pay. "It won't be as easy to put men into soft jobs as it was in the past."
Previously men's work in the Irish Aviation Authority had been valued differently from women's. In future "it won't be a question of who is doing the work, but the value of the work itself," he said.