Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank our guests this morning. We are all on the one page in that we welcome some progress on the idea of offering remote and flexible working to employees but it has to be said it will not work for every business sector and every employer.

In relation to the discussion about how the heads were arrived at and who was involved, I have stated on a number of occasions that I would like to see Irish Small and Medium Enterprises, ISME, represented on the LEEF, which it is not. I am not sure that small businesses here, in terms of the small and medium-sized enterprise, SME, sector, are being properly represented. A couple of people have made comments already that to oblige small businesses, which have no opportunity to offer remote working, to engage in having a policy in place, renewing it every year etc., is only one more onerous task that small businesses do not need. That needs to be recognised from the outset.

It may be my own analysis but I wonder whether a large amount of the rhetoric in the discussion here today essentially is trying to marry the private and the public sector as if they are exactly the same. I would say that remote working works in many administration jobs and we have a great deal of that in the public sector. We do not have the same across the private sector. Maybe Ms King tell us has ICTU done any analysis to determine what percentage of work in the public sector can be done remotely.