In this week’s public policy bulletin, read about the recently published Right to Request Remote Working Bill 2022 in Ireland, including comments from the Tánaiste. Also covered is the publication of the ESRI's paper on ‘SME Financial Distress and the Macroeconomic Recovery’; further Government support by way of the Redundancy Payments (Amendment) Bill; and a £5.4 million investment in a joint Research and Development project in Northern Ireland.
Tánaiste emphasizes that the draft remote working legislation will only provide workers with a legal right to request remote working, rather than guaranteeing it
This week, a draft Bill to give employees the right to request remote working was published by Tánaiste Leo Varadkar.
Bill includes a twelve-week time limit for employers to return a decision in relation to an employee’s remote working request.
All workplaces will need to have a written statement setting out the company’s remote working policy, detailing how requests are managed and the conditions applicable.
The proposed legislation will set out a legal framework to apply for remote working, the reasons the request could be refused and outlines the process for appeals.
Speaking at the publication of the Bill, the Tánaiste said “Up until now, remote and home working has been imposed on a lot of people due to the public health restrictions. Now that they have been lifted, I want it to be a choice. I want workers to be able to work from home or remotely or hybrid if they want to. So long as the business get done and services are provided, employers should facilitate it.”
The Bill has been developed following a public consultation that took place earlier this year on the Right to Request Remote Working. The Institute surveyed members to inform our response, which you can read here.
The Institute recognises that clear guidance will be critical to help employers implement the new legislation.
ESRI paper examining SME’s financial distress during Covid published
This week the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) published a paper titled “SME Financial Distress and the Macroeconomic Recovery” which uses a model-based approach to assess the impact of the pandemic on firm survival.
Findings indicate that without Government support in 2020 and 2021, the share of firms making losses could be approximately one third higher, highlighting the positive impacts of measures introduced.
Government spending has topped €9.8 billion to date on the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (previously the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme) and the Covid Restrictions Support Scheme. According to the report, without this support, the distress rate of firms would have been seventy-two per cent higher.
Redundancy Payments (Amendment) Bill published
This week, a Bill has been published which gives employees who have lost out on reckonable service while on lay-off due to Covid-19 restrictions, and have subsequently been made redundant, a special tax-free payment of up to €1,860 to bridge the gap in their redundancy entitlements.
Under the existing Redundancy Payments Acts, periods of lay-off in the final three years of service do not count as reckonable service. This means that in the case of redundancies now arising, where workers may have been on COVID-19 related lay-off for protracted periods, through no fault of their own or of their employer’s, their redundancy entitlement will not factor in those periods.
Employers are normally liable for the cost of lump sums on statutory redundancy, and this continues to be the case. However, as the pandemic-related restrictions were outside of their control, this additional payment covering COVID-19 related lay-off periods will not be imposed on employers.
Queen’s University Belfast and NVIDIA to invest £5.4million in R&D project
Economy Minister Gordon Lyons announced this week that Northern Ireland will benefit from a significant R&D project aiming to accelerate artificial intelligence, machine learning and cyber security research.
The £5.4 million project by Queen’s University Belfast and NVIDIA will be part funded through a £1.7 million R&D grant by Invest Northern Ireland, which is part funded by the European Regional Development Fund under the Investment for Growth and Jobs Northern Ireland (2014-2020) Program.
NVIDIA will create ten new highly skilled engineering and research roles for their Belfast office.
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