Emer Currie (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I, too, want to extend my sincere condolences to the family of Christopher Stalford, MLA. It is an incredibly sad time for his family - his wife Laura and their four children, the DUP family and the entire political family in the North. Our thoughts and sympathies are with them today and this week.

I want to reflect on the announcement yesterday about the connected hubs in relation to the launch of a mobile app where people can locate a local hub that they can work from. There is a network of more than 200 hubs that they can choose to work from, a campaign to generate awareness of that and €5 million to enhance the services. This is about making remote working a more realistic proposition into the long term and providing the community infrastructure to support it. Some €100 million has been put into making that happen in communities. We are addressing the barriers along the way. This is change in motion. One of the things the Minister for Rural and Community Development, Deputy Humphreys rightly pointed out yesterday was the need for this to be affordable for people. She is looking at ways to do that. Anchor tenancies are a way to do that as well, in terms of bringing in an employee to work on a long-term basis and multiple employees and employers setting up those arrangements.

It is not just the Department that can help, it is also Revenue. We have a remote working tax relief, but that tax relief seems to be only for employers, which can pay their employees €3.20 per day tax-free to work from home. That should immediately be available for people to work in hubs. The community gets more from people who will be working as well as spending in the community. We should be looking at reduced VAT rate for people who are paying it for themselves. We need to invest in hubs in general to make them affordable and accessible.