Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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Does Mr. Mulligan not see that by not giving the worker a right to test what the employer is saying, it is very much tilted in favour of the employer? It is the equivalent of what your Ma would have said to you years ago: "Just because I said so". This is effectively what it is. Let us be honest, it is regrettable we are at the stage where something that is so desperately needed by workers is being considered as inadequate to deal with it. It would have been better if we had started from a better place but we are where we are. I strongly encourage the Department to look at rebalancing this in favour of workers. There is not a person I have seen, as yet, certainly from speaking to people in the trade union movement and from what they have said publicly, who believes this will deliver for workers.

I want to speak about the appeal mechanism. Under the legislation people have to wait for six months before they can apply. Then the employer has a further 12 weeks to consider it. This means it will be nine months later. Then people can lodge an appeal to the WRC. From my understanding it can take anything from ten to 12 months before it will be heard. It could go faster and sometimes people can be lucky with the WRC. However, it will not go any faster than six months. This means it will be already well over a year before a worker can access a final determination on whether he or she can access remote working. Mr. Mulligan outlined all the reasons people need remote working. It will be a year when people will have had to juggle their childcare arrangements. It is a year in which they will have had to commute when perhaps they should not have needed to. When the Department is looking at rebalancing this and the appeals mechanism, is it the intention to include as part of the appeal the grounds upon which a worker was refused? At present how it is written does not effectively give a worker this right or anything close to it.