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:

I thank the Senator very much. Business associations have actually said they are concerned about protection of intellectual property, IP, and, indeed, general data protection regulation, GDPR, rules in respect of people working from home, and the suitability of the home environment in that context for remote working. I will just make the comment that this observation has been made to us.

In terms of the grounds, I do not know; we have 13 published in the Bill. We are looking at those quite fundamentally. We are not getting into the particulars of saying this one in, that one out. We are looking at it more fundamentally than that as to the structure of that part of the Bill. That is a work in progress. We have heard the view that there are too many grounds and that the way it is structured is not appropriate. As Mr. Doheny said, the business associations said there are not enough grounds and that others should be included as well. We are looking fundamentally at the nature of that section to see how it could be amended.