Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 2 March 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

General Scheme of the Right to Request Remote Work Bill 2022: Discussion (Resumed)

Ms Maeve McElwee:

As we set out in our opening statement, we feel a code of practice might be a useful way to address some of these issues. The scale of the differences across sectors and industries means this will be a legislative challenge. We have already seen that in the ability of employers to set out different types of business cases that the legislation is already trying to recognise. A code of practice might give us some more flexibility in dealing with that. A statutory code of practice would have significant standing. We have a number of statutory codes of practice that have significant standing within our employment rights framework. It can be linked to legislation, in that failure to comply with the code of practice could be relevant to an adjudicator's decision, which could make it an effective mechanism for dealing with some of the challenges.

I will also comment on the issue the Deputy raised around the fact that we now have two years' experience. He was asking if we are raising issues that have already been dealt with. It is important to point out that many of these issues have not yet been dealt with, which is a point I have made on many occasions. Over the past two years, we have had the overarching obligation, first and foremost, to manage public health and to address issues of public health and safety. That has been paramount, above all other considerations, as was right and appropriate in a pandemic situation. Employers and employees have tolerated situations that are less than ideal and that have created significant risk for many employers but because of the overarching public health issue, we have supported that.

As the members are aware and as I am experiencing myself here today, there are challenges around broadband and connectivity that continue. Many employers have tolerated that because there has been no option and it has been the safer option to deal with reduced quality in terms of connection than to have people come into the office. We have tolerated significant challenges around data security and privacy. We know that when we look at younger cohorts of workers, many of whom are living in shared accommodation, we are going to need to dip into very significant privacy issues around dealing with some of these questions that will come up, such as who they share their home with, where they lock away information, and whether others in the home also have rights to work remotely. We will deal with questions such as how data are secure, for example, when a person works for one of the big legal houses and the person her or she shares his or her home with works for its biggest competitor. We will deal with questions of whether conversations are overheard and how a worker can be sure that he or she has not inadvertently left a document on the table at home. There are big issues for employers to consider. They have not been worked out in any way. We have not, in any way, worked out the issues around occupational health and safety or how they arise. We have not worked out, in any way, how we provide adequate support for people with mental health difficulties and how they operate in the isolation of remote working. We certainly have not dealt with any of the issues around cybersecurity. We have tolerated situations where it was more important to protect public health and to make it work than actually focusing on long-term situations where employers bear the overall responsibility and the fines for any of these breaches. That still needs a lot of work and perfecting before we go down the line of this type of legislation. I want to put on the record that it is absolutely not settled yet. We know that people can all work remotely. We have very little experience of how people work in a hybrid environment. We certainly do not have the investment required to say that this will work positively in the long term.