Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy asked about the code of practice on remote working. That is a ministerial code but, as she rightly said, is not contained in statute. However, the Organisation of Working Time Act is enforceable by law. The interplay of the Act and the code of practice is important because as people increasingly work remotely via the devices we all know and love, working hours are no longer confined to the time one spends in one's workplace. People can end up doing a lot of work from home and that should be counted as part of their working hours. The interplay of the two needs to be enforced.

We have 53 inspectors in the WRC at the moment, 48 of whom are executive officers, EOs, and five of whom are higher executive officers, HEOs. There are three assistant principals and one chief labour inspector. We have sanction for 60 inspectors so we are already below the number for which we have money. A recruitment campaign is now under way to recruit additional inspectors at both EO and HEO levels. That will get us up to 60 inspectors and we intend to go beyond that and increase the number of inspectors over the next number of years. We have not agreed a figure with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform yet but with somewhere between 2 million and 2.3 million people at work in Ireland, 60 inspectors is not an awful lot. The plan is to get to 60 inspectors and progressively increase from there.