Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 4:

In page 11, after line 34, to insert the following: “Report on options for enhancement of tax credits

11.The Minister shall, within 90 days of the passing of this Act, publish a report on options for the enhancement of tax credits that can be claimed where a person works remotely.”.

I raised this issue with the Minister during the passage of the Finance Act 2019, which is the incentives currently available for people who work remotely. The only incentive at present is an allowance of up to €3.20 a day which can be paid by an employer to an employee who works remotely. People were looking at this very differently this time last year, but everyone now accepts that remote working is something we should be trying to encourage.

It comes back to the point I made earlier regarding vacant property in many regional towns and villages in rural areas. There is a major opportunity now to assist people in terms of their quality of life, participating in communities and keeping schools and post offices in villages alive by allowing them to work remotely. While people living in cities are beginning to realise that there are opportunities to relocate to rural areas, and quite a number of auctioneers are reporting an interest in that, which I pointed out to the Minister previously, there needs to be encouragement from the Government in that regard. It needs to encourage people to relocate to rural areas and to work remotely utilising the investment that will be put in under the national broadband plan. While I mention the national broadband plan, the Minister might indicate in his response if any additional funding will be put into that plan next year. The profile funding as announced on budget day is the funding he and I previously agreed for the national broadband plan. There is a commitment in the programme for Government to increase that investment and fast-track the roll-out of the broadband plan. He might indicate if there are any plans to do that over the coming 12 months.

When I spoke to the Minister privately I mentioned that putting an incentive in place such as the bike to work scheme, which has been extremely successful, would incentivise people, whether it is in the purchase of a laptop if they do not have one, or, in preparing for the national broadband plan, putting in ducting, carrying out hedge cutting and so forth, which would save the Exchequer a significant amount of money. As he is aware, under the national broadband plan the projected connection charge from the telegraph pole to a person's home is up to €5,000. If we could get people to do that work in advance through some sort of incentive or relief, similar to the bike to work scheme, it would save the Exchequer a significant amount of money but would also help to expedite the roll-out of the broadband plan because while many people may not realise it, bringing the fibre from the pole to the door of the house will be the slowest part of the roll-out of this particular project.

As I said earlier, in many parts of the country the infrastructure, schools and childcare facilities are in place. What we are missing is people. When I raised this with the Minister in the House previously he highlighted concerns about the need to get people back into offices in cities. I can understand, from an economic spend point of view particularly, the need to try to get people back working in offices in the city of Dublin but we cannot simply look at this from that perspective. Pension funds will survive in regard to their office accommodation. It might be the case that we should consider some sort of mechanism, which is an issue I will raise later during the discussion on this Bill, or incentive for the conversion of some of the office space in Dublin back into residential to deal with the housing crisis in the city. This potentially is a win-win situation for everyone. The incentives currently available are insufficient to encourage large numbers of people to consider remote working on a permanent basis. I hope the Minister can examine that realistically and in a practical way to put incentives in place that would assist people in working remotely.