Jerry Buttimer (Cork South-Central, Fine Gael)

Again, I thank Senator Scahill for his very valuable contribution. The Government is committed to the concept of remote working and is firmly of the view that it is about delivering real benefits in rural communities. As the Senator said, it is about high-paid, knowledge-based jobs and working with people like Tracy in Grow Remote to achieve that fourth pillar he rightly spoke about. We cannot just stop now and say that we have done X; we must continue to ensure we do have these quality jobs, as the Senator has called for. He gave the example of a woman living in Ballyhaunis getting a good wage. That is why the programme for Government commits to further development of the connected hubs network and why we will build on the learnings from the hub initiatives to see how we can raise the potential of the network to expand further in the coming years.

To support the ambition the Senator has spoken about and that the Government has, the Department will publish its first national hub strategy later this year. For the first time, the strategy will chart the vision for the future and further development of the range of remote working enterprise hubs currently in place across the country. It will examine the benefits already delivered and set out a clear set of actions to help us to ensure a sustainable future for these important assets. The shared ambition is to ensure that the benefits of remote working continue to be available to our workforce throughout the country.

As the Senator said, we have seen first-hand how important the remote working revolution has been. The Government is committed to this. There has been a lot of consultation as part of the Our Rural Future roadshow and the feedback is very clear. I was in charge of it. We have made significant strides in the areas of remote working and in facility provision, but we must now work on a rural development policy which will seek to build on this success and ensure we can have further dividends for people in rural Ireland.

I thank the Senator for raising this matter. We will have a further written consultation on Our Rural Future, but I look forward to the Senator engaging with me and the Department to ensure we have a strategy that promotes remote working and sets targets that can deliver for people.