Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Barry.

I thank the Labour Party for tabling this motion. The Government's response, whereby it will allow the motion to pass, reeks of cynicism again. Last night, the Government allowed to pass a motion that lacerated its approach to waiting lists for children with special needs but has no intention of doing anything about the issue. Today, it will allow to pass a motion that correctly rejects as inadequate the Government's proposals on the right to request remote working and calls on the Government to introduce:

radical alternative legislative arrangements which ensure that: — all workers have a right to request flexible work;

— there is a presumption in favour of flexible work; and

— a reason for refusal relied upon by an employer must be objectively justifiable, appropriate and proportionate.

Is the Government actually going to do these things? No, it is not. This is utterly cynical, as the Government refuses to come out with its real position because it would face public criticism over it.

We know that the Government will not do these things because the Minister responsible, the Tánaiste, gave an interview two days ago where he spelled out his view. He presented himself as being very reasonable. He stated: "One side almost wants the right to demand remote working, and that's not practical ... And then another side thinks there should be no law at all, and no right to it at all." He placed himself conveniently in the middle by saying:

I do think there should be a legal right to request remote working. But I also accept that it can't be an absolute right because some business just can't be done remotely.

This is ludicrous. The Government's proposal is gesture politics at its very worst. Is it the Government's position that it is currently illegal for workers to say to their employers that they would like to have remote working? All the Government is proposing is that it would be legal to request and then the employer would have the right to refuse on any ground at all. Workers are already able to request remote working. What they need is a right to remote working where they are able to do so. What the Government is doing is as ludicrous as saying that, instead of introducing a sick pay Bill, it will introduce a Bill allowing workers to request sick pay, or a right to request to be paid the minimum wage.

This is about the Tánaiste and the other members of the Government getting themselves in the media, talking about remote working and embracing this new way of doing things post Covid while actually refusing to do anything that might inconvenience big business and its corporate lobbyists in the form of IBEC. The result is a Bill that the trade unions have rightly described as utterly pointless. We need a genuine right to remote working where bosses are only able to refuse working from home in exceptional circumstances where it is not possible for that work to be done remotely.

The idea of the Government setting itself up as a neutral arbiter between two sides is not evidenced. The evidence shows that the Government wrote the legislation in cahoots with big business. Let us compare the lobbying and interactions between ICTU and the Government on this, which are extremely minimal, with the number of meetings that took place between IBEC and the Government in advance of the drafting of the Bill's heads. The lobbying register shows more than 100 sessions of business lobbying the Government on remote working and five cases of IBEC lobbying. At one meeting,-----

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