The gender pay gap among Ireland's biggest employers is typically bigger in their UK businesses than at home, analysis by the Irish Independent has found.
he review of UK gender pay reports by the biggest Dublin-listed companies and their peers found the widest wage gaps at Ryanair, AIB and Bank of Ireland.
Low-cost carrier Ryanair and lender Bank of Ireland, which recently exited state ownership, actually reversed some of the progress they had made last year on gender pay in the UK.
Analysis of over 100 Irish-based companies shows women were paid, on average, 15pc less than men in the UK last year.
The figure is around the UK average, but is above official estimates for Ireland, and means that women earned, on average, 85p for every £1 that men earned per hour in Irish or Irish-based companies.
This is the sixth year that UK firms with more than 250 staff have had to publish gender pay gaps. Irish firms published their first round last December.
The data measures the difference in average male and female hourly pay across a business, from junior staffers to CEOs. It does not show whether men and women are being paid differently for the same job, which is illegal.
Across 12 of the top-performing Dublin-listed companies in the UK – including Ryanair, AIB, Bank of Ireland, Smurfit Kappa, FD Technologies and CRH – women were paid an average of 14.9pc less than men per hour.
Ryanair had the widest gender pay gap of any Irish firm operating in the UK last year.
Women were paid, on average, 62.9pc less than men per hour in the low-cost carrier’s UK operations last year. It means that women earned 37p for every £1 that men earned per hour.
It is far higher than the gap in its Irish operations (46pc) and is due to the fact that just 29 Ryanair pilots in the UK are women, compared with over 1,000 men, with women making up the bulk of lower-paid cabin and ground staff.
Insulation maker Kingspan, Dalata Hotels and Guinness owner Diageo had lower pay gaps in the UK than in their Irish operations last year
Bank of Ireland’s two UK entities, which together employ 921 people, paid men on average 36.5pc more than women last year, up almost two points on 2021. The firm said it was “disappointed with the results” and said the number of women employed across the business had fallen slightly in 2022. The average pay gap for its Irish operations last year was 20.5pc.
AIB paid men on average 28.6pc more than women in the UK last year, a minor improvement on the previous year, which it said was down to “recruitment”. The figure for its Irish operations was 18.4pc.
Insulation maker Kingspan, Dalata Hotels and Guinness owner Diageo had lower pay gaps in the UK than in their Irish operations last year. Kerry Ingredients, a UK division of producer Kerry Foods, paid women more than men.
Síobhra Rush, a partner in law firm Lewis Silkin’s employment division, said there was “a lot of clarity sought and not given” by the Government ahead of the next round of Irish gender pay gap reporting. Data will have to be gathered in June and published in December this year.
“We still need a whole lot of guidance on the question of how to treat shares and vesting and on what qualifies as remuneration. And we’re still waiting for this magical portal, where employers would upload their reports.”