Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The new section 13C to be inserted into the Parental Leave Act sets out the obligations on an employer to consider a request for flexible working and the process and time limits to be followed. The provision sets out that an employer must consider his or her own needs and the employee's needs. I appreciate that the amendment is seeking to add more detail to this point but there is a risk that we might inadvertently limit the consideration to an excessively narrow frame and that could actually end up disadvantaging an employee in some way.

The remote working provisions have been drafted to align with the flexible working provisions of the Bill, the language for which derives from the EU directive on work-life balance for parents and carers. The rights of the employee have already been further strengthened by the introduction of the statutory code of practice which employers will have to abide by. That code will be drafted by the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, a key pre-legislative scrutiny recommendation. Further guidance on the decision-making process will be developed by the WRC in consultation with employer and employee representative groups and that will all be set out in the code of practice. For those reasons, I am not in a position to accept the amendment.