Public Sector Staff
Dail Éireann — 2020-09-29
============================================================

Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire

The suggestion was that technology would confer great benefits in respect of labour saving and increased productivity. We got all the increased productivity. However, instead of this improving the quality of life of workers, the opposite has happened. We even had, as part of the austerity programme, the infamous Lansdowne Road hours, adding hours rather than reducing them.
I do not accept that we would see a fall-off in services. In fact, countries that have shorter working weeks have higher levels of productivity. A happier workforce, one with a better quality of life, is a more productive workforce. I believe the Minister is wrong in his argument.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2020-09-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:48:37+00:00
Sitting date: 2020-09-29