Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 9 September 2021
717. Deputy Dara Calleary asked the Minister for Social Protection the steps being taken to facilitate remote working within her Department in particular to encourage remote working for those who live in the regions; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [42714/21]
View answerCivil Service departments and offices have been working in line with Government Covid-19 guidance, which provided for home working to continue where possible. As an essential service, staff in my Department have continued, throughout the pandemic, to work both on site in office premises and remotely to deliver for our customers across our nationwide network of offices. The number of staff who are working remotely at any one time across all regions is approximately 3,300 or 50% of the total staffing number and has remained relatively constant through the Covid-19 restrictions.
The Government has now published Ireland’s plan for the next phase of the response to the pandemic - COVID-19: Reframing the Challenge, Continuing Our Recovery and Reconnecting. Under this plan, the advice to work from home unless absolutely essential to attend the workplace is being withdrawn. This means that people can return to the workplace on a phased basis from 20th of September.
The Government has also confirmed its support of blended working in the Civil Service and, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform is developing an overarching central framework to support consistency of implementation of blended working across the Civil Service. Key considerations of the development of this policy is the potential improvements in work life balance and regional development across the State.
This framework will inform the development of organization-level blended working policies tailored to the specific requirements of each Department / Office, whilst ensuring a consistency of approach across key policy areas. In conjunction with this framework an application process is also currently being developed to allow staff to apply for blended working into the future.
In line with this approach, it is intended, subject to business needs and individual suitability, to make blended working part of the way that my Department will work on a more permanent basis. To this end, my Department will develop a blended working policy based on the framework being developed by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and will aim to implement this policy in early 2022.
