Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 6 October 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Four-Day Working Week: Discussion

Mr. Joe O'Connor:

We have 17 companies at the moment. A number of others are still in the process of deliberations and it may be at their board. Others are saying they might like to join at a later phase of the trial rather than the trial we are rolling out from next February. Even today when we announced the number of companies that have signed up, we received interest from a number of others only this morning. We anticipate and are quite hopeful that we will get to a space where we will be looking at somewhere between 20 and 30 companies participating in this first phase of the trial. As I said, we are hoping, if we can demonstrate this is something that can work in those companies as part of the first phase of this trial, it will lead to further interest from the private sector. We are hoping that, as we develop this pilot programme, we will be able to get to a point where there is voluntary sector and public sector participation in a very discreet and targeted way that will help to inform policy choices in the medium term.