Ms Maeve McElwee:

Yes, absolutely. That is why we do not particularly advocate for people working longer days. In fact, we have been working closely with the WRC around the code of practice on rights to disconnect. We are very conscious of the obligations of the working time legislation and the fact that working excessive hours does not tend to be productive in the long term. Obviously, there can be times when we work longer hours to meet a particular demand, but on a regular basis it does not tend to be terribly effective. Therefore, there are challenges around compressing the work week. We know from some of the trials that there have been challenges and feedback from employees, who said that they found it very stressful to try to work at the increased pace of the shorter working week, that it did not necessarily fit in to certain organisations or even certain departments within organisations, and that it was better to spread the hours over the full week rather than try to compress the work into four days. I am not necessarily referring to working longer days, but compressing out all the general day-to-day interactions, perhaps by taking out some of the breaks, shortening lunch breaks and doing away with a lot of the social engagement that is very important for people's mental health and well-being in the workplace, like the chat and the opportunity to spend some time together and know their colleagues outside of just their particular work interests.