Mr. Joe O'Connor:

I will address the question on work intensification over four days. We have only two barriers to entry for companies to join this programme as it stands. The first is they must agree to participate in the research. The second is that if a company contacts us and says it wants to compress its work schedule to ten hours a day over four days, that is not what we are researching or advocating for. It needs to be in keeping with the general principle of the "100-80-100" model we have outlined.

To answer the Deputy's other question, I appreciate what Ms McElwee said earlier. We think employees should have choice. A company in Wales introduced this very successfully for its 15 staff. Because of personal circumstances one member of staff preferred a compressed work schedule with five shorter days rather than the four-day week. Giving staff this option is a positive thing. Most of the studies we have done suggest that 85% or 90% of staff when surveyed on work time reduction have a preference for an additional day. Could some companies, such as a small PR firm or communications agency, that does project work for other businesses effectively shut the business on Friday and do their work from Monday to Thursday? They probably could. For the vast majority of companies we are dealing with this is about continuing to operate over five days with people having a different day off. It might be Monday, Wednesday or Friday. One company involved in the programme operates over six days with employees on a four-day week. They schedule around it. The demand for this on the business side and the worker side is heavily geared towards one less day. It is also heavily geared towards having a three-day weekend. Facilitating flexibility within this is probably a good thing.