Mr. Finn Hegarty:

Regarding codes of practice or best practices, we have learned the hard way about some of these aspects over the last seven years. Organisations like Grow Remote have not always existed. People have learned from international companies, as well as from some peer companies in Ireland, about what they have done regarding onboarding. We evolved that over time and now we have our own documentation and procedures. Working with Grow Remote, we have come up with a playbook to share those best practices, whether those involve onboarding, how to manage people remotely and-or establishing a remote first culture. That has all been documented and we have been working closely with other peers in Ireland as well to come up with a playbook. The key thing is to share that with new businesses to ensure they can pick up these approaches. Every culture and every company is different, so there is a need to adapt. Having this framework, however, is a good start.

Turning to Deputy Bruton’s question regarding the key driver in making this shift, we had seven offices globally before and cost is one of the benefits, but it was not the original driver of this change. We made this shift because it enabled us to get access to talent. We are a technology company and Dublin was a very competitive location in which to try to scale up our team. We were competing against the Googles and Facebooks of the world. For us, therefore, this shift was about getting the best talent and not necessarily having to hire those folks in Dublin.

For us, that was the driver, and it still is. It has resulted in a competitive advantage for us because we provide the flexibility to hire people wherever they are based. Covid has shifted everyone's mindset in the past few years towards at least thinking about making the shift to hybrid or remote working. My concern is that we are not just competing against Irish companies for talent anymore. There is a massive talent war right now in the tech space. We are actually competing against global companies because they are remote as well. Those who join a company in the EU, UK or US are still in Ireland, but we are losing their talent. That is the risk. This Bill is a great step towards addressing this, but the risk is that we will lose the talent to other companies if we do not make a fundamental shift.