Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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That is the danger. This has already started and goes largely unremarked, although I know Mr. O'Connell and others have been talking about it. In the broader sense of discussions at the level of the workplace, and even beyond, workers may be talking to themselves and asking what they think that means and how much information they think they have. We have not had that broader conversation and we did not have one with social media, which got ahead of everything.

Mr. O'Connell made a good point. I am wary of something that may become a talking shop and interfere with the regulation that could be needed. However, we need to establish what the levels of workplace surveillance are in the first instance.

We all know workers have been surveilled. There has been surveillance on workers since the Industrial Revolution. There can be a requirement to clock in and clock out. I am a former union official, as was Senator Gavan, and we clocked in and clocked out on our phones. I did not consider it surveillance, although I did sometimes wonder why nobody looked at the hours that were worked as the old European Union working time directive could have been invoked. That never happened and it is unlikely to happen for FSU members either.

Employers now have a technological way of gauging what workers are doing without the knowledge of the worker, to a large extent. To me, this represents a fundamental change. My employer knew when I came in and left and when I started and finished. There was not constant monitoring. However, AI in particular facilitates constant monitoring. It is not just a matter of someone clocking in, clocking out for a break and then clocking back in, and someone seeing that the person took 16 minutes instead of 15 minutes. This is constant monitoring.

Specifically, what legislative changes would the FSU like to see to protect workers? Nobody wants to interfere with an employer's right to know that the worker is doing his or her work. To me, the output tells us that but there may be a burning need to do that. Specifically, what legislative changes do we need to consider?