Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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450. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if she will provide a schedule of remote working options available for officials of her Department. [61702/21]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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Civil Service departments and offices have been working in line with Government Covid-19 guidance, which provides for home working to continue where possible. As an essential service, staff in my Department have continued, throughout the pandemic, to work both on site in office premises and remotely to deliver for our customers across our nationwide network of offices.

The number of staff who are working remotely at any one time across all business areas of the Department is approximately 3,300 or 50% of the total staffing number and has remained relatively constant through the Covid-19 restrictions. Overall, since the onset of Covid-19, the range of working options have been full-time remote working, full-time office attendance and blended working i.e. a mixture of home and office working.

The Government has confirmed its support of blended working in the Civil Service and, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform is developing an overarching central framework to support consistency of implementation of blended working across the Civil Service.

This framework will inform the development of organisation-level blended working policies tailored to the specific requirements of each Department/Office, whilst ensuring a consistency of approach across key policy areas. In conjunction with this framework an application process is also currently being developed to allow staff to apply for blended working into the future.

In line with this approach, it is intended, subject to business needs and individual suitability, to make blended working part of the way that my Department will work on a more permanent basis, continuing to offer remote working, blended working and office-based working options.

To this end, my Department will develop a blended working policy based on the framework being developed by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and will aim to implement this policy in the first quarter of 2022, subject to prevailing public health guidance.

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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451. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the way in which some and or all staff of her Department remote into their online systems; and if on-site laptops and or desktop computers are required to be powered on at all times to facilitate remote working. [61703/21]

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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453. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the reason electricity costs incurred by her Department in 2020 were higher than other years in view of the fact that officials were required to work remotely. [61705/21]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 451 and 453 together.

Electricity costs in my Department were higher in 2020 because of the impact of Covid 19 on work practices and adherence to public health guidance. Compared with other Government Departments, the Department of Social Protection has required on site attendance of an average of 50% of staff and has provided access to all public offices, including the network of Intreo Offices across the country.

Increased energy costs during 2020 can be accounted for by:

- The cost of electricity and gas increased in the period 2019-2021.

- The use of four additional buildings to facilitate temporary staff recruited to manage the unprecedented administrative demand of processing the Pandemic Unemployment Payment. Given the requirements for social distancing and attendance levels in existing buildings, this additional accommodation was necessary.

- in order to facilitate social distancing, some offices of the Department operated shift attendance and weekend attendance and buildings required to be heated, lit and ventilated for longer periods.

- The ventilation systems were operated for extended periods in all buildings in accordance with public health advice.

- Although 50% of staff have worked largely off site since the commencement of the pandemic, the utility costs of office occupation were largely fixed, with staff distributed throughout buildings to maintain social distancing.

- Despite the fact that on average 50% of staff worked on site, remote access was required to facilitate the remaining staff working offsite in the majority of cases. For security and other reasons, a remote access protocol was used which required desktop PCs to be maintained in a powered on position (remote PCs were simply used as a screen rather than having access to data and systems directly).

During 2020 almost two-thirds of staff who were working from home were remotely accessing PCs which had to remain switched on in the office; this was approximately 1,800 PCs. Since then the Department has been rolling out secure laptops to staff to eliminate this requirement and currently about 250 staff are remotely accessing office PCs.

The target of reduction in energy usage for the public sector over the period 2009-2020 was set at 33% and, notwithstanding the increase in usage last year, this Department has exceeded this target, achieving an overall 42% saving in energy usage.

In June 2021, my Department was awarded ISO Certification in energy management and is the first Government Department to achieve this standard. My Department will continue to prioritise energy management within an overall framework of our initiatives for a Greener Department and to implement the actions in this regard in the recently published Climate Action Plan.