After the majority of Covid-19 restrictions eased last week, the green light was given for non-essential workers to return to the office.
And while many employees are looking forward to going back to the workplace, there are plenty of others who want remote working to stay.
Dublin lawyer and TikToker Richard Grogan has said that "health and safety" issues may prevent a lot of employers from allowing staff to continue working from home.
He said cases could be brought to the Workplace Relations Commission and this will be a "major challenge".
Mr Grogan said on Newstalk today: "The information I’m getting at the present time is that an awful lot of employees’ homes, particularly when they’re in apartments, just will not qualify for health and safety purposes.
"There’s going to be employers saying ‘you could work from home, but I can’t let you work from home because your premises doesn't qualify for health and safety'.
“We’ve taken a fairly laissez-faire approach to it up for now - but once you can go back to the office, that really can’t go on much longer."
He said that there is a "big problem" with employees wanting to continue working remotely if they are contracted to be in the office.
"At the present time we're in a very simple situation, that's your contract," he said.
"So if your employer says 'I want you back in the office' and the employee says 'no' then the employer can say 'right, that's a breach of contract, I'm not paying you or I'm going to start putting you through disciplinary'. They're the issues.
"This is a big problem. We're certainly being contacted by people who are saying 'I'm working remotely, it's going very well. By the way I was working in Dublin now I'm living down the country and I don't want to go back to the office'.
"Blended working is probably the way we're going to go but that doesn't take account of those who want remote working and remote working is going to be a real challenge."
Mr Grogan said cases could go to the Workplace Relations Commission and this will put "huge costs" on both employers and employees.
e said: "If cases end up going down to the WRC, the WRC adjudication officers are trained in dealing with the law. They're not trained with dealing with GDPR issues, compliance with GDPR or health and safety issues, they're not engineers.
"So this is going to put huge costs on employers and employees to fight these cases."
In relation to health and safety issues, Mr Grogan said in order for staff to keep working remotely, their homes may need to be assessed.
He said: "We did this in our firm. We asked everybody and they consented. We had the assessment done to keep everybody working safe and we passed which was great.
"But yes, they're going to have to because the employer will now have a workplace that could be in Leitrim, even though they’re based in Dublin. Under the health and safety legislation, that is now a workplace and the employer has to make sure it’s a safe workplace.
“Unless the Government is going to bring in legislation… we’re going to have a situation where we have to have these health & safety checks.
“It’s unlikely that most new apartments being built are ever going to qualify to be suitable to have home working.
"That’s the reality I’m hearing at the present time: that’s going to be a major challenge, and you’re actually going to need bigger apartments, not smaller apartments.”
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