Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I would like to join in the compliments that people have paid to the staff of the Department. They have been very helpful through this pandemic. They have adjusted very quickly and are very interactive. I wish I could say that we had the same tolerance, understanding and pliability with some other agencies, particularly those who deal with a certain card that people with health issues need to get. It is a very good service but there is an issue.

I presume that a lot of the Minister's staff are following the instruction to work from home. In this context, has the Minister looked at remodelling her Department? At the moment the pensions unit is in Sligo, the child benefit unit is somewhere else, the unit dealing with carers is located in Longford and so on. Has she considered allowing people to work in different places? Somebody may work in part of the pensions unit or whatever but want to work in Longford as it is more convenient for them. I ask her to allow more people to work near where they live so that they partially work in an office of her Department and partially work at home or whatever the case may be in this new hybrid world we are all going to get into. I urge that staff would not necessarily have to work where the headquarters of a particular section of her Department is located. It would be interesting if the Minister would comment on this matter. Her Department has offices in Buncrana, Sligo, Longford, Carrick-on-Shannon as well as more local offices located throughout the country. There are a large number of social welfare offices located throughout the country outside of Dublin. Now is the time to change and allow people to work, where possible, near to where they live or would choose to live if they had the opportunity. I mean that they would be able to go into an office three days or whatever number of days a week for meetings, socialisation and all the rest and then work from home the rest of the time. We need a new model of work.