Dr. Laura Bambrick:

Reducing the working day was part of the raison d'êtreof the trade union movement: eight hours work, eight hours rest and eight hours play. It is no surprise that our colleagues in Fórsa have been central to and leading on the Four Day Week Ireland campaign. It is doing that with a range of civic society groups including the National Women's Council of Ireland, recognising as the Senator said, the need for more care time with family and other caring responsibilities. There are also the environmental benefits if we do not have to travel. As we were discussing, not everyone will have the benefit of remote working. It is important, and very important for those with caring responsibilities, but we should be careful not to create a hierarchy of workers that are more deserving of flexibility, such as people who have children or aged and dependent parents. Workers should have the right to as much free time as is possible and to get the benefits from technological advances so that we are working smarter and we are all getting that free time and that the amount of time spent in work is reduced but not the amount of work output. That should not be just for those that have caring responsibilities. It should be there for whatever way people chose to spend their free time whether it is sea swimming, baking banana bread or whatever. The more flexibility we get into the workforce the more it will benefit, especially in keeping women in those caring years in work.

While the Minister is introducing the flexibility directive for carers and parents of young children, we think it is really important that the first move should go to workers aged 55 years because that is often when women come under a great deal of pressure. They may have an older spouse that needs care and then parents are living longer. They are being forced out of work, and forced to retire, earlier than they would have chosen. If they had a right to flexibility they could have a right to request part-time hours or maybe flexitime, so start later in the day or end earlier so that they can check in on the aged parents and things like that. We think that if we have to do this as a step-change it should be to give flexibility to those over 55 years of age because that is where the workers start to drop out of the workforce. People might not be able to do nine to five, five days a week but they could do a shorter working week, whether that is a four day working week or shorter days. Flexibility is something we will be talking about for a long time.