WFH is dead and buried. Right to WFH bill is pointless

They outsource all the jobs including those in the office. Makes no difference if you remote work or are in the office. It's been going on for 40-50yrs. I first worked with outsourcing in the 90s. Look at Indias outsourcing. You're a bit late realizing outsourcing is a thing.

Depends. I worked on an enormo sales floor before and a quarter of the people spent most of the day in the smoking area (a 5 minute walk), getting coffee and chatting at other peoples desks.

its completely different now. Take off your blinkers.

I think you are confusing Contractors with FTEs

It was never common for FTEs in large companies to be outsourced unless it was due to attrition.

If you are stupid enough the highlight that your role can be done 100% remotely. Then the company understands that it can be done from anywhere in the world and not requiring presence in Ireland.

Remote workers are not required in middle to high cost locations.

Customer visits to empty offices is not a good look.. They will simply downsize buildings here as they dont need the office space.

It is not the role of an employee to dictate when and where they work.

Your employer decides.

I also dont see a flood of WTF roles advertised on recruitment websites.

So good luck to people who threaten companies that they will quit if they have to RTO.

Of course not, those people are working extremely hard, employers are entitled to expect professionalism, and the employer can set the terms and conditions they want as long as they are legal under employment law.

Well worth reading the article, especially the opinion of the HR person.

The article is behind a paywall.

Well worth seeking out if anyone can link or find it.

Outsourcing of full time jobs has been a thing for decades. I remember full teams being outsourced back in the 00's across multiple companies - with a lot of them being reshored again after it not working out for these more technical, skilled roles.

Outsourcing will continue to be a thing as it always has for support and call centre roles - there is no push currently in outsourcing skilled roles in fact things like the European and US chips acts are both regulating and incentivising reshoring many roles. Just because a role can be done remote in no way means it is going to be outsourced - there are a multitude of reasons from regulatory/tax, incentives, skills, language, access to markets etc that mean remote does not mean outsourced. Then you have the public and civil service which employs a large number of hybrid mostly staff that's totally off the cards for outsourcing.

Also I would add that while I am a major proponent of remote first with minimal if any office attendance for suitable roles most discussion on this thread is about hybrid working with 2/3 days in office and 2/3 days from home. Overall this will be the main way things go and many of these jobs have reasons that need some office attendance so are not doable from "anywhere". It's the full 5 day RTO or needlessly reducing WFH days in situations working well for years that are the major issue for so many people.

As for the final comment, if you have read my comment you will see I did just that - quit a job trying to enforce a 5 day RTO on me and I am now doing about one day every two weeks (if even) in office in my new role. I was only doing 2 WFH days previously and if left doing it may have continued in the job as I was fairly happy with that number (though I would have liked more). Moving gained me far more WFH and I was one of 4 people in the last 6 months to leave my previous employer over the full RTO and all secured jobs with at lest 2 days WFH.

As your role can easily be done remotely, what are the benefits of the company keeping you on when they can get the exact same done in a low cost location?

You could turn that on it's head and say if a job can be done sitting at a desk in an office what benefits the company keeping you on when they could setup an office in a low cost location. There is clearly a lot more to it than this though since there are 1000's and 1000's of people sitting a desks doing their job (which could be done remotely or in an office in a lower cost location by your estimation).

I was a little over 8 years in my last job.

They aren't allowed for various reasons, regulatory, legislative security, data protection etc. They'd also have to train someone in to do, and retain them, otherwise they have to retrain every new time.

Also the other places you think are less cost are actually nicer than here and paid better. I could move there and get better paid. If someone has got good marketable skill set, especially with technical skills. They aren't living in a mud hut.

AIB will be pulling the trigger on their NI workers.

RTO or Redundancy.

This will be the norm in 2026.

Another jobs cull. Traditional Banks under the pressure. ZippyPay.

Profits down, not unprofitable.

Lots of reasons given. However we can surmise there's a long term firing and hiring cycle strategy in play here. Not dissimilar to the tech companies. They can leverage RTO to assist with this. It creates narrative thats more PR friendly.

Exactly

Now that the government has sold their last stake in AIB that frees them to impose these conditions. The public sector will be the last bastion of majority WFH . They will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the real world again.