A meeting is to be held in Dublin in regards to the gender pay gap

The Irish Government is to host a symposium on the gender pay gap in Dublin next week.

The event on Wednesday, 10 January will bring together a group of senior policymakers, business representatives, trades unions and academics to discuss the gender equality agenda of the government.

On the 9 August 2017, the Minister for Justice and Equality, Mr Charles Flanagan TD and the Minister of State with special responsibility for Equality, Immigration and Integration, Mr David Stanton TD, launched a public consultation paper on tackling the gender pay gap.

The consultation process ran for six weeks and drew 38 responses and suggestions.

The symposium will also hear about the initiatives under consideration in the European Commission to address the gender pay gap. EU figures show that in Ireland, women currently earn around 13.9% less than men. The topic of gender pay gaps hit the Irish news last year when it was revealed that a number of well-known companies were not paying women the same wage as their male-counterparts. Just this week, Iceland has introduced a new law which makes it illegal to pay men more than women, and has pledged to eradicate gender pay-gap by 2022. Icelandic companies employing more than 25 people must get a government certificate as proof of equal pay. This legislation made the Nordic island nation, population 334,252, the first country in the world to ban pay discrimination on the basis of gender.