Irish Examiner view: Permanent remote working option could be transformative — if it's done properly

Wearing his trade-enterprise-and-employment-minister hat, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar last week announced a plan to have 20% of public servants working remotely on a more permanent basis this year. 

He suggested private sector workers would also be able to request the opportunity to work from home and that this right would be contained in a new Workplace Relations Commission code. 

Working from home, if — a big “if” — domestic circumstances allow, can be a wonderful, freeing experience for workers and, consequently, a boon for employers, whose staff are not half-exhausted by the daily, sometimes hours-long commute. 

There are so many positive opportunities in the idea that it is not an exaggeration to say that if we deliver it properly, it could be transformative for many in a position to reorder their lives around home working. 

It may be a transformative, Lazarus moment for our choking cities, too. 

That seductive prize cannot, however, be an excuse to gloss over the difficulties, all resolvable.

Some lockdown homes are simply too crowded, too busy to support someone — much less a couple — trying to work from a kitchen or a box bedroom, while managing remote schooling, meals, and all of the day-to-day chores families demand. 

Others who work from home have a very different problem — isolation and nothing more than the dull-enough company of pot plants. 

This fact, exacerbated by temporary lockdown measures, seems all the more pressing, as our housing crisis is changing the kind of homes coming to market. 

The speed at which developers modify the homes they build will be pivotal in whether the project succeeds or fails. 

That change, one that was coming anyway, will define the number of people to consider home working and the number of employees to benefit from a rising tide for all. There are cost implications and ways must be found to ensure fairness. 

Mr Varadkar has promised budget measures in October that would recognise this necessity. That promise may prove more complex and contested than is obvious today.

Some workers experience isolation working from home. It is not a one-size-fits-all solution.

One of those complexities is that by abandoning, or at least greatly undermining, the traditional office, some private-sector workers may be eroding their pensions. 

High-rent office blocks are beloved of pension funds and any reduction in rents will have implications for pensions.

That is not the only trump card the private sector holds in what is an important social advance, as important as electrification was half a century ago. 

Without the world-class broadband so often promised but largely undelivered by telecommunications companies, the idea of home working is at least greatly compromised. 

Government is to explore how the multi-billion National Broadband Plan might be accelerated to match the ever-growing need. 

Once again, the privatisation of a vital utility seems a gross misjudgement.

There are so many issues involved, so many vulnerable stakeholders, that the conversation around home working cannot be broad or thorough enough. 

This seems, even during a pandemic, a perfect opportunity for another Citizens’ Forum; an online conversation, of course, which is an entirely appropriate way to consider this unstoppable idea.