The Irish Examiner political correspondent Paul Hosford has a wide-ranging news feature about the effect of Covid on our public services, taking in local authorities, the Passport Office and driving tests among others. He includes comments from Kevin Callinan on the role of remote working in public services.

The weekend Indo included Niamh Horan's roundup of opinions on the future of work, with Fórsa's Bernard Harbor and Congress's policy officer Laura Bambrick both outlining concerns about the possible implications for staff working remotely. Pilita Clarke, meanwhile, looks at the impact on city centre businesses and worker productivity as hybrid work patterns take hold in Australia, with some interesting data on the Monday/Friday 'empty office' effect.

Following on from Congress concerns, reported last week, about employers using AI surveillance tech on remote workers, Newstalk's Tech Talk programme looked at the legal implications. In the Indo piece on the future of work Laura Bambrick warns that hybrid working could lead to male-dominated offices, because political support for remote working options might just be a covert workaround for unaffordable childcare and unaffordable housing.

Oh, and on housing, that REIT hole all the houses are falling into gets deeper, as Killian Woods' front page scoop (paywalled) in the Business Post revealed that more than €225 million of government funding that aimed to stimulate housing supply was "ultimately used by funds to buy up houses and apartments before they could be put on the open market for regular buyers." 

The Post also featured a story about an expensive plan to lease an entire estate in Cabinteely, south Dublin (€25m on a property valued at €18m) which Dún Laoghaire Rathdown councillors have said they had no knowledge of, and that's picked up in today's Irish Times.

As we headed into the weekend, Fórsa's education team were just out of the WRC, as it was reported by RTE that the Government is to complete a "data gathering exercise" aimed at costing the claim on behalf of school secretaries and caretakers by Friday.

Finally, what it says in today's papers from RTE's Morning Ireland (audio), leading with the cyber attack story.

Your Zen this morning is that great story from last Thursday night about events in Pollokshields, a neighbourhood on the south side of Glasgow, as two men detained under the UK's 'hostile environment' immigration policies were released back into their community after a day of community protest. If you missed it, here's the full story.

People are good. Have a good week.

Niall