Flexible Work and Commuter Delays: Motion [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-21
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Michael Collins (II), Cork South-West

Independent Ireland would support flexible remote working where it is genuinely practical, and I say genuinely practical. It should be agreed, obviously, with the employer, which would be hugely important to a lot of employers, but it is not an enforcement. I see where it has benefited my own community where quite a lot of people come from all over the world, never mind other parts of west Cork, to live and work remotely. Deputy O'Flynn mentioned connectivity. We are lucky to have a great mobile broadband company in west Cork called Digital Forge, which has made sure that everybody is connected down there. However, the phone service is not great in many places and that is something we need to look into.
I also have concerns about a lot of people who travel the length and breadth of the roads in west Cork. My brother, Councillor Danny Collins, called for emergency funding last week because the roads are in an atrocious condition in west Cork. People send me pictures of potholes when the two front wheels or back wheels of their cars go into them, or they lose part of their cars inside them. The point I am trying to make is about the northern relief road, the southern relief road, the Bandon relief road, the Innishannon relief road, the Bantry relief road - none of them have been worked on. People are spending time in cars that they do not need to spend. If they can spend that time working from home, it will certainly benefit them, but there is not a one-size-fits-all approach here. I am very aware of that. Some employers have concerns about this Bill going forward and we need to maybe iron out those concerns. Certainly, employees are working hard, but they are finding it difficult to travel on the roads we have with the condition they are in. Public transport is another area and while some progress is being made, it is not enough.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-21/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-31T01:00:51+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-21