IRELAND’S WORLD OF work has changed. Our laws have not. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have hardwired hesitation, delay, and employer vetoes into law, leaving workers with the illusion of flexibility but none of its protections.

The result is a system that talks about modern work while quietly forcing people back into habits that no longer make sense.

This retreat is deeply short-sighted. It ignores the housing crisis, clogged transport systems and our climate commitments. It forces people into longer commutes and higher costs for no proven economic gain. Worse still, it signals a lack of trust in workers and a refusal to accept the reality of how work is now done.

Our current work practices are still built on the misguided belief that Ireland operates the way it did 30 years ago: when homes were affordable on basic salaries, there were enough of them to go around, and employees had real choice about where they lived. When being close to your workplace — within commuting, walking or even skipping distance — was a realistic expectation, not a luxury. When work happened in offices, around the famous water cooler, because modern communication tools like Slack, Teams or Google Hangouts simply didn’t exist yet. Roads weren’t permanently clogged with traffic, commutes were manageable, climate change wasn’t yet shaping our daily decisions, and everyone worked a neat, predictable 9–5. That model simply no longer exists. Ireland’s modern workforce works differently, but our expectations haven’t caught up. If we really want to encourage a modern, highly educated, flexible and dynamic workforce, this is not the way to go about it. 

At present, Ireland’s employees do not have an embedded right to remote work. What exists instead is a right to ask politely and accept the answer. Since 2023, workers can bring a........

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