Ms Patricia King:

It is not beyond any of us to adjust or amend the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005, if needed, to take account of a new exigency in relation to work practice. There is nothing unusual about that. There is also nothing unusual about having a dialogue between stakeholders on that and finding the proper and most appropriate solution to it. I do not regard any of those things as barriers. Whether we like it or not, there are going to be some seismic changes post pandemic in the way our economy is structured and we are going to have to deal with some of the issues the Senator raised, such as issues around city centres, and face up to them. There are going to be changes and it is not going to be as it was before. Even from a spatial point of view, the Government had proposals for 2040 regarding building and expanding areas in which people could work and live and have essential services provided to them. We were very positively disposed towards all of that as it would be a holistic way of living. If people had children in school, their education could be adjacent, rather than 1.2 million people arriving on trains, buses and cars into the city centre of Dublin every day and doing the reverse in the evening, or getting up at stupid hours to get on trains and leaving children in crèches at 6 a.m. or 6.30 a.m. That is not a holistic way to live life. To be candid, there were not many positives from this pandemic but one of them is lifting the veil on some of that and showing what can be done. That is not to say that everything I want will be conceded or that everything the employers want will be either. We need a balanced approach. We have always succeeded in doing that in the past so I cannot see why we would not be able to do it this time.

We are strong supported of the proposition regarding the workplace hubs. The Minister is right to promote it and she was quite speedy in presenting her proposition on that. I believe they should be developed and they are one part of the answer to this remote working piece.