I am proud that the Labour Party is bringing forward this Bill and I thank my colleague Deputy Lawlor for all his work on this. The Minister's rejection of our Bill speaks volumes of what the Government is about. Having listened to the answer provided by the Minister of State and the Minister, we know clearly what the outcome of the review will be at the end of this year: nothing to see here, all is fine, move on. The Government, five years ago, had a bit of backbone in reluctantly recognising that advancing workers' rights was good for workers and good for their workplaces, families and communities. It was a Government that recognised there was a mutual benefit from affording workers decent and basic rights, in legislating for sick pay and in publishing a remote work strategy that recognised all that remote work opportunities could bring to locations across this country and bringing more people into our workplace, and in commissioning research on early pregnancy loss and its impact on women and on the workplace. Even the Taoiseach talked about introducing minimum pay for construction apprentices. All we have seen from the Government, since 2023, is a back-pedalling and retreat to a culture of distrust of workers and a failure to recognise that any gains to workers might make them more productive and better in their workplaces. This Government has disgracefully abandoned the expansion in the number of sick days to ten. That was promised by the previous Government. There has been neither sight nor sound of the sub-minimum national minimum wages and the outrageous situation where adults are effectively paid as children in workplaces. The Government hypocritically laments the lack of construction labour, yet does not do anything about construction pay, and in respect of the Work Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, we only have to look at the WRC cases over the past two years to see that, in the words of one employment lawyer, the legislation is a "toothless tiger". With 72 cases taken, 12 found against and one found for, we need not see anything more. The reality is that if you do not have a child under the age of 12, access to remote and flexible work arrangements remains a perk for good behaviour in this country, and that you have to be in the workplace for six months. It means that access to remote and flexible work is down to luck, rank or pay. Of course, we know that on average the better paid employees are, the higher the rank, the greater the autonomy and the greater the possibility of accessing remote and flexible work arrangements. We feel passionate in the Labour Party about levelling the playing field in workers' rights and ensuring that every worker, where it is appropriate to their job, is afforded a real right to flexible and remote work. We feel really strongly that if the Government is serious about cutting emissions from commuting, if it is concerned about getting more disabled people into the workplace and if it is concerned about lone parents and getting them into the workplace and ensuring greater gender equality, the answers are staring the Minister in the face. Our Bill is about keeping more workers in full-time employment. There is an irony here that between 2020 and 2021 there was actually an increase in the number of women in full-time employment. We all know the reasons for that. They were working from home and they were able to get the balance right. Our Bill is about recognising the enormous inequality, particularly for young workers, that is being perpetrated by this Government in that workers cannot buy or rent homes close to their workplaces. They are having to live many miles away and commute for hours every day just to get to their work. It is about opening up workplaces to people who face enormous barriers trying to access the labour market. Ireland has a shameful record in having the highest number of jobless lone parents and jobless disabled persons compared with every other EU member state. We have had words, strategies and all sorts of actions from Government over the years that have amounted to nothing and yet there is a piece of work that could be done in the workers' rights space in affording people access to remote and flexible work from day one of employment and this Government has refused to do that. It is about reducing emissions. Of course, we see the disaster. The Government has not even bothered to issue its climate action plan. The Government cannot, because it is at sixes and sevens as to what to prioritise at present, yet transport is the second highest emitter. If we are serious about climate action and reducing emissions, we have to get more people off our roads, ensure less congestion in the communities that I represent and ensure that workers have flexible and remote working arrangements. I thank all my colleagues here who have been fighting for this, not only this year but over the past four years since the Labour Party started talking about it. While there were real signs of positivity in 2020, and I recall the then Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, talking about the potential of remote work but that has all since retreated. It is regrettable that this Government is so narrow-minded and insular with regards to all the opportunities that remote and flexible work can afford.

Sentiment score: 0.13