Legislation on remote and flexible working is “an act of fraud perpetrated against commuters”, a Labour TD has said.
Louth TD Ged Nash said the 2023 Act was “utterly meaningless” because workers’ requests to work remotely could be automatically refused.
He was speaking during a debate on a private member’s Bill introduced by his party colleague George Lawlor aimed at strengthening the right to remote working.
The Wexford TD said his Bill is about ending refusals to work remotely “based on habit, suspicion or a fixation with visibility rather than productivity”.
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The Government legislation is a “blank cheque to employers” to say “no” to workers’ requests for flexibility, Lawlor said.
Minister of State Alan Dillon said the Government would oppose the Bill as he defended the existing law, describing it as “a fair balance between flexibility and the need of businesses to stay competitive and viable”.
The Work Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2023 sets out a procedure for employees to request their employer’s permission to work remotely and a framework for employers to consider such requests. However, it does not grant a right to work remotely, with employers retaining the authority to decline such requests based on a range of criteria – including their business needs.
Speaking in the Dáil on Wednesday, Lawlor said his proposed legislation – the Work Life Balance (Right to Remote Work) Bill – is about “seriously improving the work-life balance of workers where it is reasonably practicable”.
The Bill “enshrines safeguards for employers” because no employer “should be forced into an agreement that jeopardises their business, their business’s confidentiality or already agreed practices”.
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He said the Government and State agencies need to lead, as he cited the situation at Enterprise Ireland which was reportedly requiring staff to return to the office three to four days a week, despite its headquarters being in East Point business park in Dublin, which is “extremely difficult to access by public transport”.
“When State bodies behave like this, they normalise going backwards” and give “absolute encouragement to the private sector to do the same”, he said.
Lawlor said the Bill “will expand participation, support regional communities, and give people back hours of their lives currently wasted in traffic”.
The Minister said, however, it was “not appropriate” for any government “to dictate the terms of individual employment arrangements in a way that this Bill suggests and that’s why the current legislation is a right to request, not a blanket right to remote working”.
The Bill would in effect place the Workplace Relations Commission “in charge of elements of business operations without insight into operational needs”.
Dillon said the current legislation is only two years in existence. A statutory review will be undertaken and “any changes should wait for the findings of this review rather than pre-empting them”.
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He pointed to CSO data showing more than one million people now work from home at least some of the time, with over half a million working remotely more than half of the week.
Labour’s Conor Sheehan said in Portugal a person with a child up to the age of eight has a statutory right to work from home without prior negotiation. In the Netherlands a centre-right government made working from home a legal right. He said when the job “works on wifi it doesn’t need diesel”.
Sinn Féin TD Rose Conway-Walsh pointed to the many GAA clubs amalgamating in Mayo because they did not have enough people living in rural Ireland. She asked how many of them were working in an already congested Dublin.
“The solution maybe to Mayo getting the Sam Maguire is to have proper remote work so that people can live there,” she said.
Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín pointed to the difficulties of remote working and said family life and distractions can reduce productivity as well as communication. Apps such as Teams, WhatsApp, Zoom are “not rich forms of communication. In-person communication is a far richer way for people to engage in”, he said.
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