by Mary Gavin, Managing Associate in Ogier’s Employment and Corporate Immigration team
On 15 January 2025, a draft bill was published with proposals to make significant changes to equality law in Ireland.
The bill is the General Scheme of the Equality (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024 (the General Scheme) and the proposals it contains will amend the Employment Equality Act 1998 if passed. This article explains two changes among 12 others in the proposed legislation.
Explaining the EU Pay Transparency Directive
There are two provisions under the proposed bill that are directed at implementing Article 5 of the EU Pay Transparency Directive (the Directive). The key objective of the Directive is to strengthen the application of the principle of equal pay for equal work or work of equal value between men and women. Article 5 of the Directive obliges employers to provide salary level information in job advertisements and prohibits asking a job applicant about their pay history.
Levels of salary
Under the proposed legislation employers are to provide information about salary levels in their job advertisements. Employers will be required to provide information on salary levels and salary ranges to applicants. The implementation of this provision in the proposed Bill will mean that applicants will be able to seek information relating to ranges of pay prior to the interview stage.
The Directive states that an applicant is entitled to query pay ranges during the recruitment stage. The General Scheme goes further on this implementation by stating that employers must provide this information when publishing the advertisement.
Prohibition on questions concerning pay history
Article 5 of the Directive also introduces a prohibition on employers requesting information from job applicants about their current or former remuneration rates.
Employers will no longer be able to query an applicant’s current salary whereby they might base the new salary on the applicant’s salary from previous employment.
In summary, job advertisements for roles will have to specify the pay or the pay band and employers will no longer be able to rely on an applicant’s previous pay when making decisions on remuneration. Salary guidelines will no longer be kept confidential and the rationale for such changes is to ensure that the principle of equal pay for equal work or work of equal value is upheld.
How to ensure the Directive is transposed
The General Scheme has yet to be passed but the implementation date for the Directive looms large. Employers should start preparing now to review all policies and procedures relating to any recruitment efforts. Employers will need to ensure that there are no gaps in complying with the Directive and must remedy any of their policies to implement these new changes.
EU Member States will have until June 2026 to transpose the Directive.
About the author
Mary Gavin is a managing associate in Ogier’s Employment and Corporate Immigration team and has more than 15 years of experience advising on all aspects of employment law. Mary advises employers across the public, private and third sectors, on both contentious and non-contentious matters including employment contracts and policies, complex employee relations issues, equality matters, disciplinary actions, dismissals, redundancies and employment related disputes.
