The Government needs to embrace remote working as a right for workers, not an option.
Social Democrats co-leader Catherine Murphy says this would benefit productivity, the environment and other areas.
She was speaking as the Government revealed details of legislation to give employees the right to request remote working.
Under the proposals, anyone working for a company for more than six months would be able to apply to work remotely, and the employer would have to respond within three months.
Workers whose request is turned down would be able to appeal to the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC).
Employers would be able to refuse a request on several grounds including a potential negative impact on quality, concerns around a proposed workspace on health and safety grounds, and concerns around internet connectivity.
Deputy Murphy told The Hard Shoulder the legislation sets the wrong tone.
"I think the tone of this - there's 13 different reasons as to why employers can refuse.
"And then it can be appealed to the WRC; there's already a 12 to 15 month waiting list for cases that go to the WRC.
"And I don't think employees want to do that, and I don't think employers want it either".
She says she fears the legislation does not go far enough.
"You get big disruptors that come along from time to time - for example, the economic crash was one of them - and we said 'Oh we're going to do everything differently afterwards'.
"And how quickly we all kind of settled back in to things as they were.
"We've had a big disruptor, we've seen how things can work, people have beefed up technology to allow remote working to happen."
And she says this would also help with sustainability.
"The CSO did a survey that they released in November, and the areas that most wanted remote working - not surprising - were the commuter belt around Dublin.
"When you start looking at the sustainability argument, and even the Government's own argument about how they want to reduce the number of trips a day by 500,000, this is a brilliant opportunity to help out with that.
"And in fact it reduces things like accident rates, air pollution, a whole lot of things".
While Minister of State Damien English says the Government cannot supersede employment contracts.
"I think we have to realise Government's can't just step in and dictate to an employer the terms that they've already agreed with their employee in a contract before now.
"We have to be realistic of how far we can go here.
"It's really, really important we frame this conversation - we've led this conversation probably for the last 20 months plus.
"We've done the public consultation, there's quite a lot of research behind this - international evidence - which backs it up and makes it worthwhile implementing."
