Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

Last Friday, we got word that Ireland is one of three countries the European Commission is referring to the European Court of Justice for failure to implement the Work Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Act which was enacted by both the Dáil and Seanad in April of this year. The Labour Party has previously been critical that seven months since the enactment of that Bill, the Government has failed to commence key sections to provide a legal framework for workers regarding flexible and remote working.

In some ways this is about the law catching up with reality on the ground. Many people who people commute, who are lone parents or who need flexibility because of care responsibilities need that legal framework and right of appeal. We need to ask about the Government's attitude to remote and flexible working. Right across this Chamber we heard many very pleasant words about the need to stay in line with the modern workforce of today and to ensure we have laws recognising flexible and remote work. However, for some unexplained reason - we have not heard anything from the Government so far - it has failed to act.

There is a wider question here. There is a 17% office vacancy rate here in Dublin at the moment with another 22,000 sq. m of offices currently under construction. There is obviously an interest on the part of some employers to ensure their workers are in the office. Given the issue with commercial construction and office vacancy, is the Government now pushing workers back into the workplace as opposed to allowing them to work in a hybrid fashion?

Last night, the Department of Health published the report of the north inner city drug and alcohol task force. While I totally understand that there could be disagreements between people and personality clashes, the document produced last night was petty, self-serving and disingenuous - I do not use those words lightly. In my reading of it, it casts very serious aspersions on the outgoing chair of the north inner city drug and alcohol task force, a clinician with a fantastic reputation who gave years to the drug and alcohol task force in the north inner city and on the incoming chair, who has given years of dedication to ensuring we have better services for those who find themselves in addiction.

There is a bigger question to be asked: what is the Government's approach to the drug and alcohol task forces across the country? What the drug section of the Department of Health has done is to undermine the north inner city drug and alcohol task force. It has gone against all the lip service by the Government about its commitment to the drug and alcohol task force and wanting to subsume it into another body. What is the Government's position now with regard to the north inner city drug and alcohol task force? I think there are implications for the task forces across the country.