Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Sometimes when a Government sends the heads of a Bill to a committee for pre-legislative scrutiny, it has already decided what it is going to do but that is not the case on this occasion. I have heard what the unions, employers and the public have had to say and I am genuinely willing to change this Bill, strengthen it and make it fit for purpose. I agree that 13 reasons might be too many. It is more than any other country has, so it probably is too many. The self-assessment tool might be too complicated and six months might be too long. There are very good aspects to the Bill as well though. The requirement for each employer to have a remote working policy is a good one. In some ways, that is the most important requirement because it means that when people take on work in a business or organisation, they know what the policy is and the fact that there has to be a structured and meaningful response is also a strength. That said, we need to be honest with people. What happened in the pandemic is that people were told to work from home because we were in the middle of a public health emergency but there have been problems. The issue of data protection is one that we had to set aside because there was a public health emergency but no member of the public likes the idea of their personal data being on somebody's laptop in a kitchen. These things now have to be teased through and they were not because of the pandemic.

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