Ms Joanne Mangan:

Picking up on some of the points there, the statistic of 80,000 remote jobs comes from euremotejobs.comand in Europe itself. These are jobs that can be taken up by individuals living in Ireland and the jobs are across Europe. These jobs cover every industry and every type of job. One would be amazed at what jobs are being done remotely compared to two years ago.

On the topic of the hubs, I am very glad that Mr. Hegarty has highlighted the fact that his company uses hubs because we believe that hubs are a fantastic resource and are possibly an underutilised one right now. It is a little hard to say because they only started opening up since the Covid-19 restrictions were lifted. We see hubs as an answer to many of the puzzles of remote working. One of the big ones of these is the social aspect and interaction as not everybody likes to work in their home and not every day, at any rate. One may wish to get away from the house for a day or a week and the hubs are a very good solution to that as one can meet other people and can connect and network. One can also pop to the local coffee shop on one’s lunch and spend some money locally. They are very good for the local economy and they also answer other issues around, for example, Internet availability. If one does not have a good enough Internet service one can use a hub.

There is also the fact that not everyone has the luxury of a home office. We have heard some horror stories of people sharing flats where there are two people at a kitchen table trying to do calls at the same time. The hubs answer many questions and provide answers to many of the challenges around remote working.

Our view on the hubs is that, first, the Government has done great work on rolling out and committing to 400 hubs nationwide and we are seeing hubs being put in place all over the country in some really amazing places. Mr. Hegarty mentioned Achill Island, and one can find these up in Donegal and down in Dingle. Many of these hubs are of a very high quality, have a very good Internet connection and it is almost like being in an office in respect of the standard available.

What needs to happen and what is not happening yet is that employers are not really taking up the hubs in any great numbers and it is still being driven by the individual employee. I might decide that I would like to work in a hub so I will ask my employer and they will say “no problem”. In the main it is that situation where I may end up paying for it myself. It is a question then as to whether the employer will pay for it or I will pay for it. Ideally, the employee should not necessarily have to cover the cost. That is a question that is yet to be answered.

We are seeing other cases where it is small business owners, entrepreneurs, people who are working for themselves or freelancers who are using the hubs right now. There is definitely scope and potential there to drive the occupancy and uptake of the hubs among employees and it has to start with going to businesses and encouraging them to share the benefits, and perhaps addressing some of the challenges as they may have some issues or challenges around security or privacy. These are things that the hub owners are more than happy to talk to businesses about. It is really about bringing the hub owners and that organisation together with employers to find ways to better utilise those hubs, which are a fantastic resource.

On the question of third level, that is a difficult one to answer. We talk about employment rather than education. Education is moving more towards digital learning but I also know that the third level universities want to have people coming on to the campus. It is a little difficult for me to give my viewpoint on that. We are a training organisation not a university but we do a great deal of online and blended learning, which is becoming more common. Some students like to be able to do this work in their own time from home but I would not want to give a comprehensive answer on that because it is not really an area that we are involved in.

On the question of workers' choice, yes, they should have such a choice if a worker wants to go to the office and if there is one in place.

At the end of the day, it comes down to choice. If people are going for a job and in the job description there is no office, they can look for something else if they do not like that. It is quite a misconception that remote companies do not have offices or a premises and people do not meet. We often say that people are remote at first but they are not remote only. As Mr. Hegarty said, we need to find ways to bring employees to get the social interaction and collaboration.

A lot of the organisations we work and partner with have premises or an office. They may have a satellite office or couple of offices, use a hub or have headquarters in Dublin. For example, Liberty Insurance made the move to fully remote from in office while maintaining a couple of offices around the country. Its staff are allowed to go into the office for up to two days, but no more than that. They have to use the office for something they would not necessarily do at home. Nobody goes into the office to sit at a desk and work on emails by themselves all day. People go in to the office for meetings, team events, collaborations, brainstorming sessions and those kinds of things.

I would not necessarily be militant about saying that workers should not have a choice. There is a place for the office. Most companies will retain that. The number has grown and will continue to grow, but we are still talking about 20% to 25% of companies that might consider fully remote, whereas in the main there will be a hybrid model involving an office or premises.