Opening statement by Dr Laura Bambrick, Irish Congress of Trade Unions
to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise, Tourism and Employment
29 April 2026
Chair, Deputies, Senators
On behalf of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and our affiliated unions I would like to thank the Committee for the invitation to discuss the statutory review of the operation of the legislation providing the right to request remote working, and AI in the workplace. It is pertinent that we are meeting in the week May Day falls to discuss seismic changes in how work gets done. May 1 is an important date in the trade union calendar. It commemorates the power struggle for, and widespread adoption of, the shorter working day and improved work-life balance for workers as our share from the productivity gains from new technologies in the industrial age. It will be celebrated as a public holiday in over 80 countries this weekend, including Ireland.
I am joined by Carol Scheffer national officer at the Communications Workers Union (CWU), Kevin Donoghue director of campaigns at Fórsa, Brian McDowell head of public affairs at the Financial Services Union (FSU) and Karl Byrne sector organiser at SIPTU. As a group of unions, we were the first to identify the gap in Irish employment law for employees requesting remote working in the summer of 2020, and we worked tirelessly with department officials and business representatives throughout the legislative journey and in the development of a code of practice to provide accessible guidance on the provisions of the Act.
For large numbers of employees, remote and hybrid working arrangements are highly prized. According to the CSO’s latest figures, one third of the workforce, that is around one million people (956,700), work from home at least some of the time, with over half a million (530,500) people working more than half of the time. The overall figure has remained high and stable since the Covid-19 restrictions ended.
The right to request remote working provisions under the Work Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2023 commenced in March 2024. The vast majority of remote and hybrid working arrangements are not made using this formal process. Instead, employees and employers rely on a company policy or collective agreement that is tailored to fit that employment in compliance with the legislation. However, ensuring the legal framework (rules) for making and managing requests is fit for purpose is key for setting minimum standards and for where there is no workplace policy in place or when the parties disagree.
On 5 March, Ministers Burke and Dillon published a statutory review of the operation of the legislation, as required by Section 29 of the Act. The review process comprised of three strands - a public consultation, nationally representative surveys of 1,041 employees and 517 employers, and a series of one-to-one stakeholder interviews on the operation of the Act.
Congress and our affiliated unions engaged in good faith with this review. First, by promoting and encouraging participation in the public consultation through our networks, at the request of the department. The response was one of the highest ever for a government department public consultation, with a total 8,181 survey responses received: 7,861 from employees and 320 from employers/other. Second, representatives from four unions, joining me here today, participated in face-to-face, in-depth interviews on their first-hand experience of the Act.
The review concluded that the legislation is delivering and amendments to the Act are not proposed on the basis of a key finding of the national survey: outright refusal is a rare event when the formal process is used (7% refusal rate in the employee survey and 3% in the employer survey) with a high incidence of approval: 61% of employees requests fully approved as submitted and 33% partially approved. This headline-grabbing 94% approval rate was reference four times in the Government press release. What was not mentioned, was that it is based on a subsample of just 124 employees (p.37). The only reference to sample size was to the ‘more than 8,000 consultation responses’ to the separate public consultation strand. Predictably, the two got conflated in the media reporting of the review.
The review’s ‘most conclusive finding’ that ‘when the formal legislative process is used, it is overwhelmingly effective’ (p.53) doesn’t tally with our experience. Employers haven’t been overly perturbed with anything that is in the legislation. It is, at most, an administrative inconvenience for an employer who does not want to give their permission or when they change their mind. This isn’t unions railing against an awkward truth. Recent high-profile examples of return of office mandates or changes to minimum in-person attendance levels and the close to 0% success rate for WRC cases taken by employees make abundantly clear that the right to request remote working, as currently legislated, is failing to deliver for far too many employees. My colleagues joining me here today can share their members’ experience of the formal legislative process.
To be clear, Congress acknowledges that no employee worldwide has an automatic right to freely choose where they’ll preform their job. The 2023 Act provides a legal framework (rules) for making and managing requests to work remote, bringing us in line with statutory flexi-work rights across the EU and the English-speaking world. However, we have legitimate concerns about the existing rules on refusing and withdrawing permission. The rules need strengthening, and adding to the 32-page code of practice, as the review recommends, isn’t going to put the brakes on employers’ unchecked power to say no.
Turning briefly to AI in the workplace and another nationally representative survey.
A European Commission Eurobarometer survey of 1,006 people in Ireland (26,400 in total across the EU) about their attitude to the use of AI and the future of work in February 2024 found two-thirds of people ‘totally positive’ about the impact of new digital technologies, including AI, on their job (66%/ 66% EU average), while at the same time revealing a strong appetite for protections on its use in the workplace:
- 84% (82% EU average) say it is important to have rules which protect workers’ privacy;
- 80% (77% EU average) say it is important to have rules which involve workers and their representatives in the design and adoption of new technologies;
- 77% (75% EU average) say it is important to have rules which enforce more transparency in the use of digital technologies to handle HR decision-making;
- 76% (74% EU average) say it is important to have rules prohibiting fully automated decision-making processes;
- 76% (72% EU average) say it is important to have rules limiting the automated monitoring of employees.
People in general and trade unions in particular are not looking to hold back the tide of progress. Most acknowledge the immense potential AI systems offer for improving their work and workplace when used in the right way, which requires putting guardrails around these largely invisible technologies and employers to consult with employees and their representatives. My colleagues joining me here today can share their union’s experience of consultation and agreements struck to secure AI protections for their members.
To ensure AI delivers for workers as much as for business, we need to equip employees with the skills required to keep pace with the dramatic developments in the way we work. We also need to prepare for technological unemployment. We will need a Just Transition approach whereby policies are put in place so that, where parts of jobs or whole jobs or whole industries become redundant, workers’ living standards are protected through pay-related income supports, retraining opportunities are available and the jobs of the future are quality jobs for displaced workers to move into.
Thank you for your attention and we are happy to take any questions.
