Emer Currie (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the new legislation on the right to request remote working and I look forward to the pre-legislative scrutiny of it.Let us be clear. This legislation alone will not revolutionise the way we work. It is part of a bigger national remote working strategy that recognises the economic driver that remote working can be for places that do not have red ribbon job announcement moments and it can also invest in communities, community infrastructure and hubs.

We are helping communities transition, but we need to help employers transition as well. There is more research now emerging where employers are not as in love with remote working as they have been over the past two years, whereas employees are still as in love with remote working. We have to help them through that transition. We do it through skills, by training them, by talking in this Chamber about remote-first, remote only and best practice hybrid companies. We can do it through talking about companies such as HubSpot, Flipdish, GitLab, Dropbox and Shopify, which are not normally part of the employers that we talk about, as well as the Grow Remote alliance of top CEOs who are committed to leading the transition. We need to implement their learnings.

Employers need to provide credible and demonstrable reasons they would refuse remote working. Nobody wants a box-ticking exercise that enables them to refuse requests without an effective challenge and consideration. Many employers have already shown much goodwill. Many employees have already demonstrated that their productivity is just as good, if not more. Therefore, we should be building on that goodwill and that trust.

The double tax needs to be sorted out for residents of the South who work in the North and will not be able to work from home unless the waiver is extended. This brings our attention to the bigger issue of flexibility for all. There is legislation that will be coming forward from the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth for parents and carers. However, we know that my view is that flexibility should be available to everybody.