Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am familiar with the Kishkeam project courtesy of Deputy Michael Moynihan. It is something we should explore, developing on what we do in post offices. It is a good project so I am happy to work with the Deputy on it.

Deputy Cannon is right. There is a commitment in the programme for Government that 20% of public sector employees will be able to work remotely. My opinion is that we need to be much more ambitious than that. In the Department of Rural and Community Development, practically all staff, that is over 95%, are working remotely. In the Department of Social Protection, over 3,000 staff are working remotely and that is about 50% of the Department's staff. If the Department of Social Protection can get 50% of its staff working remotely, given all the challenges it has faced in getting 13 million payments out to people since last March, that shows we need to be much more ambitious. If we were writing the programme for Government today, the targets would be higher and there is no reason we should not be more ambitious. That is something we have to work on and we are going to make it happen.

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