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

Currently, there is no legal right to request remote working. Somebody can request it, of course, but there is no legal mechanism by which it can be done. That is what the legislation tries to achieve. I am open to strengthening it. There are already some guidelines on remote working. I believe they were published a year or so ago. The new public sector policy on remote working was agreed just in the past week or so and published by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath. It sets out the policy, at least for public sector workers.

In reality, what I have heard is happening at workplace level in the vast majority of instances is that employers and employees are doing this for themselves and are coming up with very practical arrangements, mostly involving hybrid working and a requirement for, perhaps, everyone to be in the office on one particular day of the week, but a lot of flexibility around that.

We need to legislate for those instances where employers are being unreasonable and are not facilitating remote working where that could be done, and done well. That is what we are trying to get right. I genuinely look forward to the report from the committee when it is available to see what advice it has for us.

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