Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

-----in 2015. We are very committed to upgrading that.

On the subject of this debate, remote working, everyone touched on its benefits, how important it is for family and community life and the opportunities it provides. Over the past year many people were sent home to work remotely in an unplanned way and this has had various consequences. Many difficulties have been worked out over the past year and conversations became more planned and organised.

We can see the benefits of working from home. If it is planned, it is much better for everybody and has much more positive outcomes. People had to adapt quite quickly last February and March. The conversation Senator Currie is leading and which we, as a Government, want to lead is how to plan and allow for it and put strategies in place that back it up, facilitate it and make for much better outcomes. A big part of that comes down to trust. Employers and many organisations have learned a great deal over the past year in terms of trusting employees and understanding that, in the majority of cases, productivity did not drop but, rather, was enhanced. We have all been on a journey and it is now much more acceptable to discuss options and the right to work from home. Many want to buy into that because they can see all of the benefits of it for our communities, towns, villages, families and, more importantly, individuals and employees.

I represent a commuter town. We were not born with two legs in order to sit in cars for four or five hours each day. That was not meant to happen. As a result of poor planning over many years, things worked out that way . People were left having to make journeys of two or three hours to and from work or did not know how long the journey would take, which is even worse because they could plan their lives. Remote working, as well as investment and all of the other infrastructure, including rail and so on, will lead to a much better lifestyle. Remote working is the biggest part of the latter but that will involve investing in digital infrastructure and skills. The Senator also touched on the importance of upskilling - not just for our workers but for all of us. If we invest in digital infrastructure in our communities, people of all ages can come with us on the journey because everybody has tried to live remotely and live with technology over the past 12 months but not everybody could perfect that or benefit from it. We have a lot of work to do in investing in technologies and infrastructure but also in people. Apart from the societal and community living aspect of that, there is an opportunity for jobs growth. If we do not invest in upskilling and people, we will be left behind when it comes to job creation and those opportunities. There are, therefore, many reasons to do this.

Likewise, investment in broadband is key. I know the Chair had to struggle through a lot of speeches by Fine Gael Members mentioning the success of the broadband plan. When the contract was signed a little over a year, not everybody agreed with it and we had to defend it, so the odd time, when we get a chance to compliment something we did in the past, we will avail of it. Under the national broadband plan, there is a commitment to spend €5 billion on broadband, half private and half public money, and rightly so. We all agree with and want to benefit from it and make sure it happens. All of our jobs involve making sure it happens more quickly, which is where we, the three parties working in government, come in, supported by many other Members in opposition who sometimes agree with this. They might say something different at home but in here, they agree with it. The key is to make the plan happen more quickly. One of the actions in this remote working strategy is seeing whether we can speed up that contract and deliver broadband more quickly to some of the places to which we are committed. That they will have to wait for two or three more years is not really what many people want to hear. Now that the contract has been signed and is in play, let us try to drive it on as much as we can.

The review of the national development plan will examine the various projects that we all compliment. Broadband is part of that but it also includes other infrastructure that helps people to be able to work remotely, develop our communities and create a sense of place. A key part of this, which was touched on, is the national planning framework. When we put that plan in place about three years ago, we needed to think about what would happen in the future. We looked ten, 20 and 30 years ahead. The pace of change over the past year has been dramatic, which is a positive, but we need to make sure we adapt our strategies to that. The 20-year planning framework has jumped on so much in the past year that we need to look at the population levels we set at the time. Our main aim was to ensure the next 1 million people living in this country were spread out. Where would they live? Where would we invest in hospitals, education, housing and jobs? That population growth was to be spread all over Ireland, not just on the east coast. Many people on the east coast have gone home to Longford, Tipperary, Cork, Wexford or wherever else ahead of the strategy and are looking for homes in their towns and villages. We have to adapt quickly to that and put plans in place to accommodate people in a correct and planned way. This is what the planning framework was about. The review of the framework and the investment strategy is, therefore, timely. Thankfully, as a nation, we have the option to spend the guts of €120 billion in capital to make all this happen in the years ahead. We are in control of our destiny because we have the resources to do so and we have plans in place that can be adjusted, moderated and driven on. We are in a very good place to deal with what the pandemic has brought us and to future-proof this country. A major part of that is allowing for and developing remote working as much as we can.

One issue raised relating to planning involves pods for people's homes. There is a long-standing planning rule that people can extend their house by up to 25 sq. m without requiring planning permission. It is probably time to consider how we can accommodate home offices without imposing on people the cost of making a full planning application, which can be quite expensive.

We also need to have a conversation about how we maximise the uses of houses in rural Ireland. It was mentioned that it is harder to get planning permission in some counties than in others but there are also loads of empty houses in rural Ireland. We need to bring forward policies to join those two dots. People are more interested in living at home. We have debated how to save rural Ireland here many times. The whole conversation was around how people needed to have a functional reason and not just a desire to live in rural areas. They needed to have jobs, which meant investing in infrastructure and much more besides. Now people can have jobs elsewhere and they can be at home. There are many more opportunities to develop rural Ireland now. We knew these would come eventually but it is now a matter of dealing with them as quickly as possible.

The Making Remote Work strategy is a plan to make remote working a permanent feature in a way that benefits our citizens. It is about options and choices. Senator McDowell spoke about forcing it on employers. I do not think that is what he meant but that is the impression he might have given because he views working from home as a right.What we are talking about at this stage is the right to request to work from home. We are proposing to deal with that. Likewise, people have a right to parental leave and then they work through with the employer whether they take it in blocks of six weeks, two months, one month or in whatever way they do it. That is also what we are saying in respect of this right. It is a right to request the ability to work remotely. For some jobs, it will not be possible at this time but technology is constantly changing. However, for many jobs, it is absolutely possible once the employer is willing to have that conversation, to see what supports are there and how to make it happen. Going back to the carrot approach, we are asking that employers embrace this. There never has to be force involved. They will recognise the benefits for themselves, their organisation, their staff and the community and country as a whole. That is what we are trying to do and that is the message that Senator Currie and many others have been pushing and driving for a long time.

Grow Remote and many others are involved in this conversation. As a Department, we took on this challenge well before Covid and there was a great deal of research into remote working, what had to happen, how to develop it, what the opportunities were and what the interest was. That was happening in 2019. We had some guidelines published in early 2020 and they had to be updated because of all the changes. As a Department, they were looking at this but it has jumped on a lot so we had a review of that strategy and a consultation day over the summer and out of that, the Tánaiste launched this strategy and this plan a few weeks ago. Interestingly, more than 500 submissions came into that from many representative bodies and employer bodies. They were all positive and everybody wanted the opportunity to develop remote working. In many cases, research will show that people still want that blended model with the option of both. We have to facilitate that. For many, it will be fully remote working in the house or local hub; for others, it will be two or three days. It is all about giving people the choice and the recognition by all State agencies, including the IDA, Enterprise Ireland and the local enterprise offices, that jobs do not always have to have a location. They can be completely remote. They do recognise that and we have seen some good success. Companies were named by Senator Currie earlier on that have come into this country and created hundreds of jobs and yet there is no office that one can link them to. That is really positive. There is so much opportunity for everybody if we tap into that.

I had a speech to go through the details of this but I will not go into it now. It is a strategy with actions, a 15-point plan that we want to work on with everybody over the weeks and months ahead. It will mean some legislation to be brought in here. That is what we are working on and hopefully we will be back here in the near future with the legislation.

On the right to switch off, I absolutely agree. I think everyone would support that. That would be developed as a code of conduct first and we will see how to bring everybody with us on that journey. Codes of conduct work extremely well if everybody buys into them. They are well recognised in our labour legislation and our infrastructure to deal with labour issues. Codes of conduct are a positive step and we want to build on that.