When the pandemic sent Irish office workers home in 2020, few people expected remote work to become a permanent feature of Irish working life. Six years on, it has — and the law has caught up.

Since 6 March 2024, every employee in Ireland has had a legal right to request a remote working arrangement. That right was introduced through Part 3 of the Work Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2023, backed by a Code of Practice from the Workplace Relations Commission.

The Act required a formal review of how the remote work provisions were working, between one and two years after they began. That review was published on 5 March 2026 by Ministers Peter Burke and Alan Dillon. Its headline finding was simple: the legislation is working well in practice. Here is how it is actually going now.

How the Right to Request Works

The law does not give employees an automatic right to work from home. What it does give them is a right to ask, and a right to have that request taken seriously.

An employee can make a request once they have been with their employer for six months, though they can prepare and submit it before then. The request must be made in writing and set out the details of the proposed arrangement, including where the employee would work, why they are asking and why the location is suitable. It must be submitted at least eight weeks before the arrangement is due to start.

The employer must then consider the request, taking into account both its own needs and the employee's needs, and having regard to the Workplace Relations Commission's Code of Practice. It must respond in writing within four weeks, although that can be extended in some cases. If it refuses, it must give reasons.

The Code of Practice sets out the kind of factors an employer might weigh up, from the nature of the work and the suitability of the proposed workspace to data protection, health and safety and the impact on colleagues. It gives both sides a clear framework to have a fair conversation.

In short, the law turns what used to be a favour into a process — one that is structured, transparent and fair to both sides.

What the 2026 Review Found

The statutory review drew on a nationally representative survey of employees and employers, alongside engagement with representative groups. Its findings were strongly positive.

Most importantly, 94% of requests made under the legislation were approved, either in full or in part. That is a remarkable figure. It suggests that when employees ask, and set out clearly how remote working would work for them, employers are overwhelmingly willing to say yes.

Employers also reported minimal administrative burden. That matters, because one of the concerns when the law was being drafted was that it might create extra paperwork for businesses, especially smaller ones. In practice, the review found that the process has been manageable.

The review did identify one clear area for improvement: awareness. Use and awareness of the right remains low, particularly in rural areas, and knowledge of the WRC Code of Practice is lower still. In other words, the law works well for the people who use it, but many people who could benefit from it do not yet know it exists.

That is an encouraging kind of problem to have. It means the system itself is sound, and the next step is simply to make sure more people know how to use it.

How Irish People Are Working Now

The review sits against a wider picture of how Irish working life has changed. According to the Central Statistics Office's Business in Ireland 2025 release, published in May 2026, almost a fifth of people in employment said they usually work from home — meaning more than half of their working time — in the final quarter of 2025.

That is down from a peak of 37.5% in the first quarter of 2021, when public health measures kept most offices closed. But it still represents a major and lasting shift compared with the years before the pandemic.

Remote working is far more common in some sectors than others. The CSO found the highest rates in Information and Communication, where 58.0% of people usually work from home, and in Financial, Insurance and Real Estate Activities, at 52.3%. Those are the sectors where much of the work happens on a screen and teams are used to collaborating digitally.

Many more people work in a hybrid pattern, splitting their week between home and the office. For many Irish workers, that balance has become the norm — and the right to request gives them a clear route to formalise it.

The broader labour market is strong too. The CSO's Labour Force Survey for the second quarter of 2026 estimated 2,839,300 people in employment, up 21,200 on a year earlier. Flexible working is one of the tools that helps keep people, particularly parents and carers, in the workforce.

Why It Matters for the Future of Work

Remote and hybrid working is about more than convenience. It is changing where people can live and work in Ireland. A software developer in Mayo, an accountant in Donegal or a customer success manager in Kerry can now hold a role that, a decade ago, would have required a daily commute into a city.

That has real benefits for regional Ireland, supporting local towns and villages, easing pressure on housing in the cities and cutting commuting time and emissions. The Government's network of remote working hubs, spread across the country, supports this shift by giving people a professional place to work close to home.

For employers, flexibility has become a powerful tool for attracting and keeping talent. In a tight labour market, being able to offer remote or hybrid options widens the pool of people a company can hire from and helps retain experienced staff who might otherwise leave.

AI and digital tools are making remote collaboration easier all the time, from smarter meeting software to shared workspaces that keep distributed teams connected. As those tools improve, the practical barriers to working flexibly continue to shrink.

The review's findings suggest the right to request strikes a sensible balance: it gives employees a voice, respects the needs of the business and has done so without creating a heavy burden on employers.

What Employers and Employees Can Do Next

For employees, the practical lesson from the review is that it is worth asking. With the vast majority of requests approved in full or in part, a clear, well-prepared request has a strong chance of success. Setting out how the work will be done, how you will stay in touch with colleagues and why your proposed workspace is suitable makes it easier for an employer to say yes.

It is also worth reading the Workplace Relations Commission's Code of Practice. It explains what employers are expected to consider and gives employees a useful guide to framing a request in a way that addresses the most common questions up front.

For employers, the review offers reassurance. The process is manageable, and a clear internal policy on remote and hybrid working can make it simpler still. Many Irish employers now publish their approach to flexible working openly, which helps with recruitment and makes expectations clear for everyone.

For the Government, the next step is awareness. The review found that knowledge of the right is lowest in rural areas — exactly where remote working can make the biggest difference to people's lives and to local communities. Raising awareness there could help the law deliver even more of its potential.

Taken together, these steps would help the right to request move from a law that works well for those who know about it to one that works well for everyone.

The Bottom Line

Two years after the right to request remote work came into force on 6 March 2024, the statutory review published in March 2026 found that 94% of requests were approved in full or in part, with minimal administrative burden for employers. Almost a fifth of Irish workers now usually work from home. The law is working — the main job now is making sure more people, especially in rural Ireland, know it is there and how to use it.