Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 18 May 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

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

Mr. Dermot Mulligan:

We did a fairly extensive consultation on the legislation. Before that, in fact, there was a consultation process as well on the national strategy, Making Remote Work, to progress remote working generally. We had 145 written submissions, so it was an extensive consultation process. We looked carefully at the submissions we got. As I noted earlier, there has been a divergence of views in respect of the views expressed in those submissions and since then. It is a matter of us trying to put in place a framework to allow requests for remote work to be dealt with in a structured way that allows employers and employees to have that conversation in a structured way and to build in certain floor-level protections.