Press Statement

Preasráiteas

16 September 2020

Go to release: Business Impact of COVID-19 Survey 27 Jul to 23 Aug 2020

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (16 September 2020) published the results of the sixth wave of its Business Impact of COVID-19 Survey (BICS). Wave Six of the BICS release captures important information on business in Ireland as society and the economy continued to reopen.

The online survey was sent to a sample of 3,000 businesses and the information was collected between Tuesday, 25 August and Wednesday, 09 September 2020. The response rate to the survey was 25.5%. Commenting on the results, Statistician, Colin Hanley, said:

"The results show that on 23 August 2020, 96.3% of responding enterprises were trading in some capacity, 2.5% of enterprises had ceased trading temporarily while 1.2% had ceased trading permanently.

However, while most respondents were trading, not all were trading at full capacity. Almost two thirds (63.3%) of enterprises were trading at normal capacity levels while 33.0% were trading at partial capacity.

More than half (50.5%) of responding enterprises reported lower than normal turnover for the four-week period 27 July to 23 August 2020. Turnover exceeded operating costs for more than half (56.4%) of respondents.

Responding enterprises spent an average of 4.4% of expenditure on measures to comply with COVID-19 requirements for trading during the four weeks 27 July to 23 August 2020. Micro enterprises (less than 10 persons engaged) spent an average of 6.1% of expenditure on COVID-19 measures.

Office based enterprises had an average of 57.7% of staff working remotely in the week ending 23 August 2020 compared to an average of 12.9% of staff working for non-office based enterprises. Almost a quarter (23.2%) of enterprises plan to make remote working, in some capacity, a permanent fixture.

Among the leading concerns for businesses operating during the COVID-19 pandemic were increases in the number of COVID-19 cases leading to another lockdown (48.6%), reduced demand due to lower consumer confidence (36.7%) and staff well-being (29.4%).

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

The results published today are from the final wave of the Business Impact of COVID-19 Survey. The CSO wishes to thank all respondents for their participation throughout each wave of the survey.

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