Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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66. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the number of persons employed in his Department that have a formal agreement to work from home one day per week, two days per week and five days per week; his Department’s policy in respect of facilitating requests by persons to work from home; and the number of persons that have made requests to work from home in 2021 and to date in 2022, that have been declined. [44577/22]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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My Department’s Blended Working Policy was launched in June 2022. The Policy is informed and guided by the Civil Service Blended Working Policy Framework published in March 2022.

Under the Department's Blended Working Policy, all staff are eligible to apply for formal blended working arrangements and each application will be assessed on its own merits taking account of role suitability, employee suitability and health and safety requirements.

The Blended Working Policy envisages that the average number of remote working days per week that staff will apply for will be three days. There may be instances where business needs dictate that staff are required to attend the office more than that. Similarly, some staff may also apply to work remotely for more than three days per week, which will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Applications for formal blended working arrangements opened to staff in my Department on Monday last, 12th September 2022. As the application process has just opened, my Department has not fully processed any application for blended working and therefore does not have statistics to hand on the number of persons granted or denied a formal blended working arrangement, or the number of days associated with such arrangement.

As applications are processed over the coming weeks, the Department will have this information to hand. Based on extensive engagement with staff and managers throughout the Department in preparation of the roll out of the application process, it is anticipated that there will be a high level of uptake among staff to avail of formal blended working arrangements.