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

I hope that when the Department does the look back on this, it will inform how it deals with this stuff into the future. I have long argued that remote working should be considered a separate and distinct form of work, as shift work would have been when it was considered a couple of decades ago. It is its own form of work and it must have its own structures in place. The pandemic heightened that activity. Over the years even the civil and public service was slow to embrace what we initially called teleworking. That probably tells how old I am. Then it became e-working and now it is remote and hybrid working. The fact is that it was very slow and then it was very sudden. There is a massive lost opportunity, and we are in the post-pandemic period now, that the time was not used to put the structures in place.

Mr. Mulligan said in his submission that the Department is looking at strengthening the redress provisions and the right of appeal as well as the reduction in the grounds for refusal. These are fairly substantial amendments that will have to be made. With respect, I suggest that we would not be here if the consultation process had been a little more robust. What exactly is the Department looking at when it refers to strengthening the redress?