Press Statement

Preasráiteas

21 July 2020

Go to release: Business Impact of COVID-19 Survey 1 Jun to 28 Jun 2020

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (21 July 2020) published the results of the fourth wave of its Business Impact of COVID-19 Survey (BICS). Wave 4 of the BICS release captures important information on business in Ireland as society and the economy continues to reopen.

The online survey was sent to a sample of 3,000 businesses and the information was collected between Tuesday, 30 June and Wednesday, 15 July 2020. The response rate to the survey was 27.1%. Commenting on the results, Statistician, Colin Hanley, said:

‘The results show that 92.1% of responding enterprises were trading in some capacity, 7.4% have temporarily ceased trading while 0.5% have ceased trading permanently as of 28 June 2020.

More than six in ten (61.6%) responding enterprises reported a reduction in turnover of 10% or more during the four-week period from Monday 1 June to Sunday 28 June, compared to normal expectations. However, 33.9% indicated that their turnover had increased following the easing of restrictions on Monday 8 June.

Three in ten (30.4%) enterprises who responded to the survey indicated that they had used temperature screening in the workplace in response to COVID-19 while 46.7% of enterprises had mandatory PPE.

The cost of implementing measures to comply with COVID-19 requirements for trading varied by the size of the enterprise. Micro enterprises, which have less than 10 persons engaged in the business, had a median spend of €500 while small enterprises (between 10 and 49 persons) had a median spend of €4,000. The median spend was €10,000 for medium sized enterprises (50-249 persons) and €42,500 for large enterprises.

Among the enterprises that responded to the survey, the average percentage of staff working at their normal location was 58.3% while the average percentage of staff working remotely was 26.8%. During the four weeks from 1 June to 28 June 2020, an average of 19.1% of the workforce returned from temporary leave while 7.1% returned from remote working to their normal place of work.

It is important to note that the results presented in the survey represent responding enterprises only and are unweighted.’

The fifth wave of the CSO’s Business Impact of COVID-19 Survey will be distributed on 27 July 2020.

The CSO wishes to thank respondents to date for their ongoing participation in the survey.

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