Asked to return to the office, but caring for older parents at home

Woah, the whole of €354 a week caring for two people? Compared to the after tax weekly income of €1000+ in an IT job?

If I was getting a 1000 euro's after tax I wouldn't be questioning to my boss when I could come to office. Carers would be decided by the parents needing 24/7 care not "99% of the time, they are grand on their own."....

Their issue is that they wanted only one day a week and you wouldn't do it. Frankly that was foolish, you should have given them the bare minimum they asked for and avoided the escalation, because clearly it made them look at the situation and see what was really happening.

No nobody would leave an 8 year old home alone - parents pay someone to look after their kids while they are at work. Parents cant use their kids as a reason why they can never to go the office - likewise you cannot use your parents as a reason why you never can go to the office.

They asked for one day initially but you didn't engage with that from your posts above. So you weren't willing to meet half way at the time. So complaining now that they wont meet you half way seems a bit strange.

I know in my work from home agreement it states that i cannot use that to mind people. There has to be someone else there as a caregiver. 99.9% of the time that is to stop people childminding but i assume they cannot just say child as that is discrimatory.

You have now admitted to your company that you are using company time to take care of your parents. You work from coffee shops during working time as you are running errands, and that you work weekends extending your working week.

To be honest id say you need to leave. I would expect your company to get a lot stricter with you going forward.

Your line manager should play a key role here. Have an open discussion, pointing out how good you are at your job, the futility of working in the office for your particular role and highlight the need for flexibility. You won't get full time WFH, as that would open up all kinds of questions for others in the organisation. You might get it down to 1 day a week initially, with possible improvements over time.

Either you can live with that, or you need to start job hunting.

They can also work up to 18.5 hours per week and earn up to €350 net of PRSI pension contributions and keep all of the carers.

Carers includes the €1850 x2 Carers Support Grant in June and Free Travel so it’s actually quite good.

As the OP is living at home I assume that there is minimal rent if any at all.

Their employer doesn’t have to accommodate them to the extent they appear to think they are entitled to be accommodated at all, and no, there’s nobody out there to put the employer “in their place”.

They can try and make a complaint to the WRC though on which grounds I’m not sure, and the WRC may offer mediation but it’s not going to happen any time soon.

Carers allowance is means tested. You might get carers benefit for up to two years per parent and that’s not means tested.

"Despite what they sell they know that in general remote working is worse for continuous improvement, innovation, knowledge transfer and mentoring."

Imo, literally not sure how all of the above cannot be done remotely with screensharing and video calls. Sounds like poor management, poor training and team organization. Sounds like a dinosaur manager excuse imo.

While I don’t want to be unsympathetic to the OP, the (general) sense of entitlement to ONLY work-from-home is putting those who have no other choice but to come on-site in a very, very difficult position.

I work for the tech support desk of an IT wholesaler in Germany. For about two years it was a routine of one week onsite and the other week at home (so that one cohort of the those who chose to come to work never met the other). About 95% of the other employees deemed themselves to be ‘ at high risk of catching COVID’ and were mandated to stay at home, which is kinda understandable. My very first day was in the middle of March 2020, so I’ve never most who work there. I signed my contract before things exploded with respect to infection rates and so on...

While all my (vaccinated etc) colleagues are now back in the office full time every week since nearly every restriction going has been lifted, the building itself is almost completely empty, weeds in one of the car parks, a canteen that never has more than 3 or 4 people for lunch, staff whinging about having to drive to the building to receive/return IT equipment once or twice in the year (despite knowing nothing else, pre-covid). I could go on…

Our manager recently told us that the 30 year old building is going to be shut down (as it costs too much to heat, secure etc). We’re all going to be moved to another location so that we can carry out tasks that don’t always fit into somewhat ‘romantic’ image of the Cloud. Our new office could be in the same town, OR it might be in a distribution centre owned by company about 90 km from where I live..nobody knows for certain. Until now, work was a 10 minute cycle from my front door. This announcement is not ideal for a man who will soon be a father for the first time (I left it a little in my career 😀)!!

The OP (and others who have convinced themselves that WFH is all that THEY can possibly manage) really has to embrace the ‘hybrid’ approach. If one can now easily ‘collaborate’ over a pint with mates at the weekend, they can easily do similar collaborations with those they were initially paid to work alongside with.

Epically long/pointless ‘virtual’ video meetings and a work day that has no clear start, break times or finish to it etc are not going to always work to the advantage of the company and its employees in the long term.

As others have pointed out, the OP's family situation is undeniably sad, but his employer cannot reasonably be expected to (in some form) pay for the time lost when he attending to his parents' medical needs and so on.

Doctors, nurses, teachers and many others who went to college (included myself) have to just get on with life as it was pre-covid, others should bear the weight as well.

"My job can't be done remotely, therefore everyone else should have to come into the office as well even if their jobs can be done remotely, because if I have to do it, then so should they..." is a fairly entitled attitude as well, to be fair. (And, incidentally, so is the idea I often see expressed that everyone else should have to come into the office just to provide company and social engagement for those extroverts who dislike working in a mostly empty building.)

Consider this from another perspective; do you think it would be reasonable for folks working in, say, the building trade to demand that people with desk jobs give up their cushy indoor offices and work outside in the cold and the heat and the rain, because if the builders have to then it's only fair that everyone else should have to endure the elements along with them?

When the employer was requesting a single day a week in the office management was expecting “Yes Sir” or even “can I please have some more time to arrange additional support for my parents when I’m away” . Certainly not “no” it’s a long commute.  As if everyone else is carefree regarding family responsibilities . It’s essentially ruining the graces that an employer gave (and you can be sure going forward no one else will be given similar ). I take it not showing up to work in office as requested is breach of contract and when HR is called they are working to either get the OP into line or get rid. 

The fact that work can be done remotely is irrelevant, it’s the equivalent of saying during quiet times in office between projects that I’m not showing up as there’s nothing to do. 

Get a home help is my advice. You are doing two jobs - being a carer and working. That’s a lot. Now you have to be back in the office for two days.

Otherwise go part-time and apply for the carers allowance.