Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Mr. Hegarty makes a good point about how important human interaction is. No one wants to get to a situation where we completely lose that but people are very anxious to have the flexibility. Ms Mangan did not touch on the issue of the right to disconnect. When a worker's home is his or her workplace, a worker is always and never in work. Does she see a role for legislation on that? Should it be built in? I would absolutely introduce legislation on it. A worker should have a legal right to disconnect.

In terms of the experience of workers so far, I have a concern that there could be a grey area. However, it also exists in an office environment. There is a view that the culture of presenteeism could be challenged by remote working or the hybrid model. It does not always work like that unless one has the legal right to disconnect. When Grow Remote works with companies, are they conscious of that? Are they prepared to do it anyway? With the best will in the world, a worker still needs that legal protection. Without it, one will have an issue.

We all know we are in the middle of a housing crisis. We could talk all day about how we got there. We can all see how we got to where we are. There are many people who live in inappropriate accommodation. For those people, access to a hub is going to be essential. Would Ms Mangan see it as the role of the employer to provide the hub or that of the worker to source it? How would that work? Could it work in a clustered situation similar to what the banks are doing? They are bringing their workers together in branch buildings that may not be open; the bank workers are going to be working in there even if the branches are closed.