The Government has approved the establishment of a National Advisory Council on Teleworking as the first step in the formulation of a national teleworking strategy.

The 20-member council has been set up to advise the Minister of State for Science, Technology and Commerce, Mr Noel Treacy, "on the development of teleworking employment opportunities in Ireland and to recommend attainable actions which will contribute to the realisation of those opportunities".

Prof Tom Callanan of the University of Limerick will act as chairman of the council, which includes representatives of the semistate sector, the private sector, universities and unions. The council held its inaugural meeting yesterday and is due to report to Government within 12 months.

Introducing the initiative, Mr Treacy said there were many good reasons to introduce teleworking. These included the creation of jobs in remote areas, making services available to customers outside normal office hours, taking advantage of a ready supply of labour in a different locality and attracting or retaining people with scarce skills.

He said teleworkers tended to use some of the hours freed from commuting for more work while the reduced distractions in working from home have been shown to lead to productivity increases of more than 15 per cent.

Teleworkers have also been shown to be more reliable, more loyal, likely to produce better quality work and less likely to take time off, Mr Treacy said.

The main driver for the uptake of teleworking in both the US and Britain has been the problems caused by commuting to city centre offices, including stress on workers, environmental pollution and energy and property costs.

"In essence, it brings work to the people, a reverse of what seemed for so long an unstoppable trend of bringing people to where the work is," Mr Treacy said.