Dr. Nat O'Connor:

France has brought in a law that allows anybody to move to a four-day week. That helps older workers but also helps people with care responsibilities, often women to help people with disabilities and so on. That has been brought in as a legal right. We could envisage either a right or certainly encouragement from employers to offer that kind of flexibility to certain categories of worker, including older workers. As Ms Murphy said, that kind of flexibility makes a workplace that will work for more people. Ireland has a very low employment rate for people with disabilities and there is a lower female employment rate. That kind of flexibility could help expand the labour market generally.