David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

If I heard him correctly, Mr. Barnes introduced another line of argument in which he suggested, quite correctly, that many doctors, nurses and others are working extremely hard and are burned out at the moment. His line of argument is that we should reduce their stress and the amount of work they are undertaking by bringing in a four-day week. However, as I said, for many professions, such as childcare, productivity is linked directly to the amount of time workers put in, at the moment. If somebody is working five days per week minding a certain number of children and that is reduced to four days a week, productivity has to drop. We can talk about the quality of work but it comes back to how productivity is measured. If you assume right now, let us say, that a childcare worker is of very high quality and you reduce his or her time by 20%, his or her work and productivity is linked to the time he or she puts in. It is the same with teaching in the classroom. If you are teaching in a classroom, as I did for many years, and you work extremely hard and put the time and effort in, how can your productivity be exactly the same? By definition, you will be engaging with fewer students to start with if your time is reduced to fewer classes. It is a question I am struggling to get an answer to.

Mr. O'Connor mentioned the public sector. I take it the companies he is trialling with do not include public sector workers. It will probably be important at some stage to have a trial that includes public sector workers before we can pronounce on it. We just have private sector workers who, as Ms Cox and Ms McElwee said, are in a different area. It is different from the public sector.

I might get in trouble for saying this, but has anyone ever looked at the time politicians put into the work we do? We do not switch off at all, as Ms Cox will tell you. I know I will get in trouble for this, but we are always on and the phone is always there.