Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This morning, the first vaccine was administered in the UK. It is a very positive step and I welcome it. The recipient was a 90-year-old lady from Coventry. The real debate over the next six months is how we will deal with life after Covid and how society will deal with going back to work and all the issues around that. We will have to start talking about people's ability to work from home two or three days a week permanently into the future. We have seen its success. If someone told me 12 months ago that the majority of people could proactively and capably from home, I would have thought it nearly impossible but now we know it can happen. It is a real game changer for society and the world economy. We need a real debate on how we can support it in law so that people have the opportunity to work two or three days from home because that is how society wants to work. I spoke to many people at the weekend who do not want to return to a five-day week of driving two or three hours back and forth to work. That change in mentality has to be supported in legislation. We have to give the people who go out to work that opportunity following the break in how the economy has worked. It could be a positive to come from the pandemic. It could be how society and work practices will evolve and change. We need a real debate on what legislation we can bring forward to ensure that can happen.