Despite being a young, fast growing economy that embraces new technologies, the vast majority of Irish people still have to turn up for work each day from nine to five.

New research has found that just 11 per cent of Irish companies allow staff work from home - a rather dismal figure compared to the 55 per cent average in other European countries surveyed.

Irish managers believe that teleworking and other flexible arrangements benefit staff and make them more productive but, in contrast to their European counterparts, they don't think it delivers competitive advantage.

Irish businesses are at the top of the European table in terms of positive attitude to the notion of flexible working, but lowest ranked when it comes to actually implementing it.

The data comes from a survey of 100 senior managers and employees at a selection of Ireland's top 1,000 companies. The study, which was also carried out in Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and the Nordic countries, was undertaken on behalf of technology company Citrix, which provides access control systems to a number of Irish organisations.

The results of the survey are broadly in line with previous studies of teleworking in Ireland, which have found that while awareness of the practice is high and most businesses have most of the facilities in place to support it, the take-up is low.

Lewis Gee, area vice-president for Citrix believes that flexible working is about "breaking down the barriers that prevent you doing what you need to do because you are not at your desk". Under that definition, it includes staff working from home for some or all of their time.

The challenge for technology providers is how to give those users access to applications such as e-mail, no matter where they happen to be or what device - laptop, smart phone or personal digital assistant (PDA) - they are using.

Irish businesses can't blame a lack of available tools for not adopting a more flexible policy. In the survey, Ireland was way ahead of the European average in terms of using devices which support remote working. Laptops were used by 98 per cent of respondents compared to a European average of 92 per cent; Blackberry e-mail devices by 63 per cent (23 per cent across Europe); PDAs by 41 per cent (39 per cent across Europe), and 3G phones are also used by 41 per cent of those surveyed (25 per cent across Europe).

According to Gee, the demand for remote access to systems is coming from staff, in contrast to demand for such systems coming from senior management or the IT department. In fact, it is usually IT and business managers who reject calls for it because they think that it will be expensive to implement, difficult for them to manage and will be a potential risk to the business, he explains.

As a result, some of the most progressive implementations of technology are in the public sector rather than among mainstream early advocates of technology, like financial services.

This is largely because it is seen as a way to deliver better service to the customer, Gee believes. He cites the example of a public health nurse who could use remote access to look up patient records or book an appointment with a specialist while visiting a patient in their home.

Low adoption rates revealed by the survey - 63 per cent of senior managers said that fewer than 20 per cent of their staff work remotely - come despite the best efforts of both State agencies and technology providers to promote the practice in recent years.

What's most surprising given the staff shortages facing Irish business is that flexible working doesn't seem to be seen as a way to bring women with young children back to the workforce. According to Gee, British Telecom, an innovator in the use of teleworking by its staff, has a 99 per cent return to work rate after maternity leave, compared to a general rate of about 50 per cent in the UK.

The company attributes this to the fact that its flexible working arrangements allow women to balance their job with childcare requirements.

Ultimately, it could be that Irish managers believe that good management involves having your employees where you can see them, rather than looking at the end result of how much work they get done.

However, while employees rarely work remotely or from home, the rates for directors who regularly or occasionally work remotely are just below the European average.

It would seem that it's a case of "do as I say not as I do" for most Irish bosses.