The mask slips as well, when it is not on. I repeat, a Cheann Comhairle, that I do not make these points to understate the fact mistakes were made nor to avoid accountability for them but rather to ask for balance and proportionality. Sinn Féin does not meet its own standards as a political party or as a government in the North. If we cannot have confidence in Simon Coveney, how can we possibly have confidence in Deputy Pearse Doherty, its treasurer, who is responsible for all its financial affairs, or in Minister …

The right to request remote working is part of a broader Government vision to make remote working a permanent feature of Ireland's workforce in a way that can benefit all, economically, socially and environmentally. The commitment to introduce legislation to underpin an employee's right to request remote working was made in the national remote work strategy published last January. The pandemic has certainly brought remote working centre stage and work on this important legislation is well advanced. The Bill will se…

We expect to have heads of the Bill, that is, the general scheme of the Bill, in the next couple of weeks. Obviously, that will have to go to the committee chaired by the Deputy. We hope to have the legislation enacted, realistically early in the new year, but if we get it done before then that would be great. I am a big fan of remote working and blended working. It is part of the future. Part of the dividend from this pandemic is that we will not have people crowded into offices in the way they used to be. The off…

Essentially what I want to do here is to maximise choice for people. Many people have seen the benefits of working from home and remote working. Many people said it could not be done or that we would see a big drop-off in productivity. Generally speaking, that has not been the case although some people would dispute that. We are keen to make this part of the new normal. The legislation will put in place a structured system whereby a person can request remote working. The employer will have to provide a response wit…

The programme for Government makes the commitment to "progress to a living wage over the lifetime of the Government". I have spoken before about how the pandemic has caused many of us to reconsider and re-evaluate what an essential worker is. We now understand that it is a much broader group of workers than people would have originally described, many of whom are on low pay and in the private sector. The Government has been clear in our belief that a legacy of the pandemic must be better pay, terms and conditions f…

I do not expect the Low Pay Commission to come back to us with the rate of the living wage. I expect it will come back to us with a method by which the rate can be calculated on an annual basis. Perhaps that is the same thing, but it is an important point nonetheless. There are two ways of calculating it. It can be calculated as a percentage of median wages, for example, 50%, 60% or 65%, and there are different arguments as to which figure should be chosen; or it can be calculated based on what is called a minimum …

There is a group - I forget exactly how it is described - that calculates the living wage at €12.30 per hour. If I remember, it also recommended that there be no increase in it last year. I do not know what the recommendation will be for next year. The group is made up mainly of people from the trade union movement, academics and those from NGOs. They are all worthy and learned people but they have not included in the group any representatives from small business or the employment or business sector, for example. T…

I thank the Deputy. I appreciate that the announcement was only in the past couple of days and came after the Deputy submitted his question. As Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, I can assure the Deputy that the Government is very much aware of the challenges that Brexit brings for exporters, in particular for businesses in the agrifood sector. We continue to work closely with the agrifood sector to mitigate the impact of the new trading arrangements to operationalise the new EU-UK Trade and Cooperation…

I thank the Deputy. In an ideal world, I would like to see a closer relationship between the EU and the UK. I am not sure that is possible for the foreseeable future but anything that would align our standards, such as a veterinary agreement or food standards agreement, would dramatically reduce the number of checks and controls necessary and would be very beneficial to our farmers and exporters. The issue of vets is obviously a matter for the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine but we talk about these t…

I thank the Deputy and I hear what he is saying. I will definitely look into the issue of storage. I am unsure as to whether this is an issue for Enterprise Ireland, for the customs service or for the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to take the lead on but this is an all-of-government matter and I will make some inquiries.

As I advised the Deputy in June, there is a commitment in the programme for Government to request the Low Pay Commission to examine universal basic income, UBI, informed by a review of pilots that have happened around the world that would also advise us on how we would carry out a UBI pilot here in Ireland during the lifetime of the Government. The Low Pay Commission is currently examining this issue and has commissioned the ESRI to conduct technical background research on the issues that would arise from the intro…

There has been contact at official and ministerial level and I am happy to clarify this point. As the House will understand, the whole idea and point of a universal basic income is that it is universal. This would be a weekly or monthly payment paid to every adult in the State, whether they are a Bono or a busker, a Deputy or someone experiencing homelessness. What was proposed in the report on the arts was something very different and was a basic income for artists and would not at all be universal. It would be th…

The right to request remote working is part of a broader Government vision to make remote working a permanent feature of Ireland's workforce in a way that can be to the benefit of everyone - economically, socially and environmentally. The commitment to introduce legislation to underpin an employee's right to request remote work was made in the national remote work strategy published last January. The Covid pandemic has certainly brought remote working centre stage and work on this important legislation is well adva…

The legislation is still in development, so we do not even have the heads at this stage. There are many aspects that might end up in it and I am certainly open to suggestions. As for the right to switch off or disconnect, we dealt with that through a code of practice, which was published a few months ago. It is not a statutory code of practice but it is admissible in evidence where somebody takes a complaint in respect of the Organisation of Working Time Act, for example. After consideration, we just did not think …

The Deputy raises an important issue and it is something to which I will have to give some thought with my officials. There are different scenarios. Somebody who applies for a job in an office and gets it might then request the option of working from home one or two days a week. In that case, the employee is making the request and there is more of an obligation on him or her to provide the space from which he or she is going to work. Increasingly, however, jobs are being advertised as remote. About 50,000 jobs acro…

From the outset of Covid-19, many employers have taken the initiative, in line with subsequent requests from the Government, to be as flexible as possible in allowing staff to take time off to look after their children who are not attending school or crèche. Employers have a general duty of care towards their workers and that care is often expressed in the form of negotiation, compromise and flexibility. Some options to be considered for workers with caring responsibilities that preclude them from working their nor…

As is always the case in these scenarios, you have to look at it from the point of view of the parent and of the employer. Particularly where the parent is a lone parent, their having to take time off work could be very injurious. There would be lost income and they do not have somebody else co-parenting with them to help out. Therefore, all the income in the household is lost, not just one of the two incomes. From the point of view of the employer, if somebody takes time off to look after a child who is sick or se…

It probably has. We have to give some consideration to that.

I thank the Deputy. Reckonable service is service that is taken into account when calculating a redundancy lump sum payment. The current situation is that the law provides that a period of lay-off within the final three years of service before redundancy is not allowable as reckonable service and is not included as service for the purposes of the calculation of the redundancy lump sum payment. Therefore, as matters stand, an employee who is in receipt of the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, and who was laid off …

I hope to be in a position to bring a proposal to Government either next Tuesday or the Tuesday after. Obviously, I will have to do so before 30 September, so that people who are triggering their redundancy claims will know where they stand on that. We have had some consultations with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU, Irish Business and Employers Confederation, IBEC, and others, as part of this. Potential solutions are being worked on by my Department and the Department of Social Protection, because this po…