Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It would be useful to hear a little more about how the witnesses think the legislation could be changed. I recall that the American with Disabilities Act 1990 famously had a system whereby it was necessary to have a statement about a policy in that regard. It was then necessary to show each year that positions had been evolved to ensure it would not be a case of just saying that things were done a certain way and that was that. It was necessary to show each year that reasonable steps were being taken to advance the policy. If we could change this legislation to envisage that sort of approach, would that be a practical way to evolve it?

Turning to the public service, it seems to me that some of the bodies that are the most reluctant to undertake remote working are in the public service itself. Has Ms Mangan any data that could shed light on resistance within the public service to remote working and the advantages for the public service of moving to a remote-first strategy? The impression one gets is that the sort of command-and-control approach which still prevails leads to shutters being thrown up straightaway. Can we evolve some legislative nudges, which I think is the word people use, to force the public service, as well as the private sector, to undertake this approach?

I have a question that Mr. Hegarty might address. One possible way of resolving this issue in legislation is that we could see the establishment of codes of practice that companies would not be required to apply immediately. Over time, however, those would become factors used in situations where employers had unreasonably turned down requests for remotely working. Has Glofox evolved a set of protocols that could be pointed to for use in dealing with the onboarding aspect described, as well as to some of the other tricky issues employers throw up as being obstacles? Perhaps we could learn from that approach and enshrine in legislation the expectation that codes would evolve and that companies would have to respond. Drawing on his experience, does Mr. Hegarty think that a remote-first approach will be accompanied by significant vacating of office properties? Has Glofox's advocacy of this approach been substantially driven by a desire to avoid property costs as well as running the company in a different way?