In 2021, the Gender Pay Gap Information Act 2021 was signed into law, the regulations followed in June 2022. This new legislation means that from 2022 every company in Ireland with more than 250 employees must report annually on their gender pay gap. NCI has published our second report on the 30th of December 2023.

‘Gender Pay Gap’ should not be confused with ‘Equal Pay’: in Ireland, it is already illegal to not pay the same money to two people doing the same job in the same circumstances. ‘Gender Pay Gap’ is an institutional overview of the difference in pay for men and women across all levels and contract types.

Understanding the Gender Pay Gap for a complex higher education institution such as NCI is challenging. It is challenging because of the mix of roles and contracts within the institution, but also because wider societal values that are placed on certain roles, for example early years vs post graduate education.

National College of Ireland has two areas that particularly affect the pay gap: Associate Faculty and the Early Learning Initiative.

When the outliers of Associate Faculty and ELI are removed, NCI’s Gender Pay Gap is a mean of 13.6% and a median of 15.7%. This is slightly above the national average and means we have work to do.

When Associate Faculty and ELI are included, NCI’s Gender Pay Gap is more significant, with a Mean of 28.4% and a Median of 41.4%. This is due to the complexities of these two areas, and the analysis of the very differing sectors within NCI being put together, as required.

Within our Associate Faculty, the Gender Pay Gap is negative (women are paid more than men, an improvement on 2022) -10.9% and a median of -7.8%, because there are more women teaching at post graduate level in 2023 than 2022.

The Early Learning Initiative (ELI) is a specialist programme targeted at eliminating educational disadvantage, with a focus on early childhood development. Nationally (and internationally) this sector is highly gendered and often low paid. NCI/ELI has been ahead of the sector in terms of pay, conditions, progression and supporting ELI staff to gain qualifications. All ELI staff are offered full time permanent contracts and educational opportunities, but are also by provided family-friendly flexibility which allows them to balance their jobs and caring responsibilities. As most ELI staff are women (96% of the non-faculty staff) and have caring responsibilities most opt for the flexibility of family friendly options. This has enabled them to stay in employment and progress their career and education.

Within ELI, the Gender Pay Gap there is a large negative GPG, a mean of -54.3% and mean of -39.1%.

ELI is critical to the empowerment of local women in the community, who are often educationally and economically disadvantaged, but, because their hourly rate is being analysed alongside the institutions academic and professional staff in a gender pay analysis, there is a fundamental impact on the overall GPG figure in NCI.

For more information and further details, please find NCI’s second Gender Pay Gap Report 2023 with more details.