I was at a conference recently where someone was talking about the HSE health app and encouraging folks to download it. To use it, you need a verified MyGovID account, and to have that, you need .... drumroll please.... a public services card. Why does my own health data need a PSC to access?

Especially give that the govt. is facing more legal action over use of its biometric data. The DPC report came out and they just ignored it and kept it as a necessary thing for loads of stuff.

www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41...

Related: I'll be heading to the National Digital Awards this day next week. I suspect I won't take home the prize, I'm in a tough category with some very deserving winners, but this (plus the above) is a good reminder that I'm making a difference even when it feels like I haven't.

Yeah, I'm one person and I managed all this! Ok, I haven't gotten the govt. engagement I'd like just yet, and I haven't managed to shift our pay gap lower just yet, but I have become a trusted source of pay gap info completely of my own accord, and that's pretty cool

It's also funny to hear stories from folks who know me and find my site being discussed in their own office, and then when they reveal that they know me and that it's just me, people are shocked that it's just one person. That's a gratifying and necessary reality check for me sometimes.

Ages ago, I went to a mostly public service conference that I was specially invited to, and met a senior figure in Pobal who told me that they use the site and data regularly too.

It's hard to believe that my little project really has become the de facto source for pay gap data for everyone.

I was googling the other day and came across a report from the ESRI that cited me! And I got an email from someone asking when the new data would be available to download (I had an unknown bug that he highlighted so I was able to fix in minutes and get the data sorted) and he was from Fidelity.

I keep trying to girlboss my way out of structural inequality but it's not working. Perhaps a power stance and a red lip?

Howdy neighbour! 👋

The gender pay gap in Ireland stands at 11.4% now, according to the data I've gathered on PayGap.ie. But that's not the whole story, because the highest gap in the 2025 data so far is 69%.

Women earn less and have fewer opportunities for progression and the motherhood penalty is a huge part of it.

None of this is set in stone, none of this has to be this way. We choose ambivalence and women retire 40% poorer.

The motherhood penalty is a choice made by our majority male governments, time and time again.

We *choose* for parental leave to be unpaid, for it to be optional to pay maternity leave, for childcare to be unaffordable and not cover anything beyond a fairly standard 9-5 job. These are all choices we make which force others into the "choice" to leave work after having a child.

I am so fed up with people treating the motherhood penalty as if it is a foregone conclusion that can't be changed, when it absolutely can. It's not a natural thing, an immovable force, it is a policy decision that we made, and that can be changed.

If you don't want mothers to be poorer simply because they have children, the solution is to subsidise childcare and have progressive and reasonable policies around things like parental leave and govt. benefits.

In other words, don't just abandon people the second they are pregnant.