The Gender Pay Gap in our main retail banks is unacceptably high and urgent action is now required says FSU

Action plans need to be more transparent and  implemented – says FSU

John O’Connell, General Secretary of the Financial Services Union (FSU) has called for urgent action from the main retail banks to combat what he termed the “unacceptably high” Gender Pay Gap reported across the sector.

The Gender Pay Gap Information Act 2021 requires all companies with over 250 employees to disclose their gender pay gap across a range of metrics. Each of the three main retail Banks in Ireland have now reported their findings with the mean Gender Pay Gap averaging 18.7% across the three main banks and the median averaging  13.9%

The reported GPG from each bank is:

Commenting on the publications of the reports John OConnell, General Secretary of the FSU said:

“ The Gender Pay Gap results published this week by the three main retail banks are very worrying and deserve the attention of all stakeholders in the sector. It is unacceptable banks are reporting little or no progress on closing the gender pay gap. In some cases, the GPG has widened proving the current action plans are not working. I contrast this to the priority banks have given to awarding dividends to their shareholders.

Closing the gender pay gap can best be resolved when it is viewed as a core objective of the company’s  business plan and not as an add on at the end of a meeting.

The FSU are ready to play a constructive role in assisting each of the banks in creating and implementing an action plan that deals directly with the issue.

The FSU are members of the steering committee of the Women in Finance charter which is placing an onus on firms in the wider financial services sector to promote and encourage women at every grade in their organisation, to look at what barriers exist and to put action plans in place to break down the barriers and impact positively the gender pay gap in the sector.

I call on each Bank to engage constructively with the FSU on agreeing their individual action plans that can be implemented across all areas of the Bank. 

The publication of the data is an important start in understanding the issue. What these results show is that it is now time  the Government look at further measures to ensure talk is turned into real action. A good start would be for the Government to move on implementing one of the two bills currently in front of the Dail on pay transparency.”

ENDS