Where an employee can work at home, it should be facilitated. It can be a massive plus for a worker. It can reduce stress. Obviously, it can reduce the cost of the daily commute, and in certain cases, it can lead to a significant increase in productivity. It can also be good for the local community as it brings people back into local towns and villages during the day. We do live in a city state, unfortunately, where people are commuting from Connacht, Ulster and Munster into Dublin on a daily basis. In many small villages and towns in this country, you could play hurling on the main street in the middle of the day with the lack of traffic and the fact there is nobody there. It is an employee's market at the moment. In my experience, many employees do get the right to work at home because they have more influence and power in this market given that there is nearly full employment. There are also costs to this and that should be recognised. In some situations, it does lead to a fall in productivity. In some situations, the home is full of distractions in terms of family, pets and so on. It can also lead to a fall in communication. Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp and Zoom are not rich forms of communication. In-person communication is a far richer way for people to engage. Human relationships are very important for the functioning of any business and on many occasions this can be done in person far better. I have noticed in the past that at-home working can cause many difficulties. As a TD, during Covid, trying to get in touch with a civil servant and communicate with a person was nearly impossible for years when trying to get simple work done in those situations. Young people learn less when they work remotely because the natural flow of communication in the situation is not there. They find it harder to impress their managers and develop in a business in a working-at-home situation. Remote working hubs are a good hybrid solution in many ways because they get people out of their homes and into a collegial working environment. It also means that people are located locally. I understand that, in fairness to it, Deputy Lawlor's Bill has significant protections for employees and I appreciate that it allows for the WRC to make decisions, although I would be cautious to see how this would work in practice. The issue we have in the main for workers at present is the fact this city is the most congested in Europe. The average speed of traffic is slower than it was in the 19th century with horses and carts because of a lack of public transport. We really need to focus on that.

Sentiment score: 0.09