Ireland's home working falls again, but only the full-time kind

Ireland’s Central Statistics Office published its Labour Force Survey for the second quarter of 2026 on 20 August. In that quarter, 990,600 people worked from home at least some of the time – down 22,500, or 2.2%, on the same quarter a year earlier. The number who never work from home rose by 43,800 (+2.4%) to 1,839,400, which is 64.8% of everyone in employment.

The two halves of the total move in opposite directions. Those who usually work from home, meaning more than half of their working days, fell by 25,700 (−4.6%) to 529,800, well down from the Q1 2021 peak of 846,700. Those who sometimes work from home rose by 3,200 to 460,800.

Why this matters

If you work remotely in Ireland, or you are weighing a move there, the headline decline is not the number to plan around. What is contracting is the majority-of-the-week arrangement; occasional home working is holding and edging up. In practical terms, an Irish employer is more likely to agree to a day or two at home than to a fully remote contract, and that gap has widened over the past year. If full-time remote is what you need, treat it as a term to negotiate explicitly at offer stage rather than something you can drift into later.

Context

Ireland’s statutory position has not changed: the Work Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2023 gives employees a right to request remote working, with the employer obliged to consider it and give reasons for a refusal, not a right to receive it. The CSO figures show what employers are doing inside that discretion. The pattern matches Eurofound’s EU-wide research published a week later, which found around one in four EU employees now works hybrid, and it matches the direction of travel across several other member states.

What to watch

The next Labour Force Survey release will show whether the “sometimes” category keeps rising as the “usually” category falls, which would confirm hybrid settling rather than remote work receding. For the wider picture of working remotely in Ireland, see our Ireland country guide.