Legislative Reviews
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-28
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Sinéad Gibney (SD), Dublin Rathdown

I thank the Minister of State. I apologise. I forgot to thank Deputy Conway-Walsh for facilitating my going first.
I heard similar words from the Minister of State's colleague a short while ago when we were discussing the strengthening of workers' rights under the Sinn Féin motion and it rings hollow, I am afraid. What we know about and what we have seen is just headline after headline about people being called back into the workplace.
People are dealing with a cost-of-living crisis and now a fuel crisis and there are ways we can respond to that as a society. During the Covid-19 pandemic, remote working became something that worked for people. Yet, since then, we have seen it rolled back again and again. I literally just got a ping on my phone while I was sitting here, which was a headline published by thejournal.ie two hours ago about Aer Lingus calling its staff back four days per week. The Minister of State's numbers do not paint the actual picture. The 94%, which is a great result, applies to 70 application since 2024. Awareness raising is not the only answer. There are a lot more reasons people are not using this system. It is not simply because they do not know about it.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-28/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:52+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-28