We need your help now
Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.
You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.
If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.
Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
By continuing, you are indicating that you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
GOVERNMENT ADVICE THAT everyone should work from home “unless it is absolutely necessary” that they attend the workplace in person comes into effect from today.
The guidance was outlined by Taoiseach Micheál Martin during an address to the nation on Tuesday during which he said the phased return to workplaces was being “paused”.
That phased return was initiated from 20 September after the long-sanding advice to work from home if possible was relaxed.
The measure is part of an effort to reduce social mixing and mobility in the context of an incidence of Covid-19 the HSE’s Paul Reid yesterday described as “rampant”.
Unlike previous periods of the pandemic when capacity limits on public transport were linked to advice on remote working, no such capacity limits are to be in place from today.
Business group Ibec has said that its members will “continue to support safe working protocols” while also calling for “clear guidance” for those who are in workplaces.
Outside of the private sector, a number of ministers have said that management within their own departments should facilitate remote working.
Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney said that “where possible” staff in his department should work from home, noting that there are some “essential services” such as producing passports that require workers to be present in person.
“We need teams of people in the Passport Office because there is no way of working from home because of the way in which the networks work, the security systems and so on,” he said.
Coveney said, however, that there are “many examples across the public sector” where remote working is possible and that he now expects “lots of lots of public sector workers to revert back to working from home” following the change in government advice.
Minister of State at Department of Agriculture Martin Heydon told TheJournal.ie this week that “the vast majority” of people within his department have worked from home during the pandemic and that he expects them to revert to this from today.
Minister of State in the Department of Transport Hildegarde Naughton said it was “up to everybody to look at their own workplaces” but she interacts with officials primarily via Zoom or WebEx meetings.
The Association of Higher and Civil Public Servants (AHCPS) estimated in a survey during the summer that about 80% of staff within various departments were either working remotely or were engaged in blended working.
The group represents some 3,500 members who are primarily senior managers within the civil and public service.
As part of the phased return to workplaces, some public sector staff who had been working from home had been returning for a number of days per week but AHCPS general secretary Ciaran Rohan told The Journal that he expects this will now be reversed.
“Most of them were sort of having a staggered return, one day or two days, they were going to go from one to two or three but that was postponed at the end of October. Then obviously with the government advice now a lot of places are reverting to the way they were,” he says.
The Department of Health recently told staff that they are to work from home indefinitely unless directed otherwise, with Rohan saying that Revenue has not brought people back to the office because of anecdotal reports that productivity levels have “gone up considerably” during the pandemic.
Fórsa, the largest union within the public service, has also said that productivity has been “sustained or increased” during the pandemic. The union says that civil service management should therefore be “well placed” to implemented the new working-from-home advice.
“In the context of the new advice, and the proven flexibility, efficiency and productivity of civil and public servants in adapting to remote working over the last 20 months, management should be in a position to confidently lead the way, thereby helping to ensure the safety of their staff at this particularly challenging juncture,” a spokesperson for the union said in a statement.
Fórsa has also been in discussions with Department of Public Expenditure and Reform about long-term blended working plans and has said the civil service should “show a lead on remote working”.
As part of the government’s own Remote Working Strategy it is targeted that home and remote working should be the norm for 20% of public sector employees.
The AHCPS has also been involved in those long-term discussions about blended-working and Rohan says it is the responsibility of civil service managers to set an example.
“The discussions we’re engaged in centrally for the civil service will likely frame what it looks like for the wider public service and perhaps then for the wider workforce,” he says.
When asked if there has been any resistance to remote working among management in the civil service, Rohan says it has been rare:
“If there is we’d be there but we haven’t had to do much of that. We may have had to do it for individual people who have said they don’t need to be in and the employer decides they do, but to be fair there isn’t much of that and where it is it’s ironed out.”
“People have different views on the idea of remote working and there are some managers who probably aren’t hugely enthused with it because they like to have their people around them, but in the main we’ve been able to manage people like that.”
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Shuggie Bain great read harrowing but unputdownable . Went on to win the Booker Prize and its the authors debut novel. Hopefully book shops wont close in this stage of lockdown for a llt of our sanity
@Margaret Mcgarry: super choice!
@Margaret Mcgarry: big fan of book shops Mags but needs must now. Order online if necessary
@Margaret Mcgarry: A wonderful book
I was on a fantasy buzz this year which started with the book “the dwarves”i thought it would be rubbish but I ended up reading the entire series plus any related books by the author which I think added up to 9 books.and then followed that up with one of the best fantasy books I’ve ever read”the name of the wind”.its the first of a yet to be concluded trilogy. The second book is just as good although I cant remember the name of it right now and the third book has not been released yet.
@Aidan Ryan: The Wise Man’s Fear is the second one. Both amazing books. We’ll be waiting until we’re old men for the third one it seems.
Came across irish writer Jane Casey who is based in london. She has a series of meave Kerrigan detective that are so captivating. Fiction but reads factual. Each one with a few surprising twists.
@Matt: I had a look at her books and picked the first ‘the running’ but was put off by the seeming darkness of the story line. Are they very heavy? I cant do depressing books lately. But I do love a well written detective story. And a female lead would interest me
I bought several Tom Clancy books and worked through them. I bought a few biographies which I always enjoy. Also read some of the books my children had collected over the years such as Alex Rider and The Hunger Games.
I was given 6 books for Christmas from various family members which will help me get through Lockdown 3.0
John Creedon’s new book on place names of Ireland (half way through at the moment) and Manchán Magan’s book on the richness of the Irish language… two books I recommend without a doubt
Doireann ni Griofas ‘a ghost in the throat’
Wonderful
And any of the Benjamin black novels.
The phone book
@Alan Cosgrove: That’s grand so, now try explaining the storyline to someone.
@RJ.Fallon: spoiler: Mr. Zebedee did it.
@Alan Cosgrove: online?
Bill Brysons Book ‘One Summer’ has to be the Book of the Year, in the absence of an uncle telling you a few fireside tales of an eventful 1927 it was a perfect companion for this empty Christmas,Enjoy folks
Some of my favourite books (not just of 2020): Memoirs of a Geisha, The Historian, The Kite Runner, Rachel’s Holiday, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, all the Harry Bosch series by Michael Connelly, A Discovery of Witches, The Butterfly Garden, Rachel Abbott’s Tom Douglas books, and The Thief of Time by John Boyne. Many more but they’re off the top of my head – hopefully someone will get a good read out of it. Happy New Year all :)
The Three-Body Problem trilogy was an interesting read, my first encouter with any chinese SciFi which seems to have lost little if anything in translation, its an interesting take on the deafening silence of the Universe with a lot of believable science for a layman, its very unusual, and despite very little deep character development and almost an autistic feel to it at times, I found it fascinating, right from its disturbing opening scenes set in Mao’s China, to the brilliant second book (The Dark Forest), right thru all its speculative ages set in our real past and distant future.
@Marco Rolo: excellent. chinese sci-fi is becoming popular.
@Marco Rolo: loved those books. Be interesting to see the Netflix adaptation of them – though I can’t imagine how they’ll film the end of the third one!
The first two books of the Phillip Pullman Trilogy – the Book of Dust. Deborah Harkness’ All Souls Trilogy, Charles Dickens’ Nicholas Nickelby. I’m now dipping a toe into Dolores Cannon’s book, The Keepers of the Garden which I will have to read at least twice to try and get my head round what it says about our origin and that of our planet.
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. An astonishingly beautifully written book. Tells the touching story of Shakespeare’s son and reimagines Anne Hathaway as the gifted herbalist and devoted mother, Agnes. Cannot recommend highly enough.
Barack Obama – A Promised Land, particularly in audiobook format with him reading it. Great book, incredible story about the type of leader the USA needed and needs to have, now that we’ve seen the madness….
Books picked up for a couple of euro in charity shops were interesting reads for me during 2020. A tribute to Maureen Potter, edited 2004 by Deirdre Purcell, was what I call comfort reading. My Education, edited by John Quinn (1997) was based on interviews with a range of Irish people – so many of whom went to everyday schools. I read two of the late John le Carre’s espionage novels, most recently Absolute Friends (2004). Le Carre doesn’t glamourise spies and their accomplices and is reasonably skeptical about the shifting morality displayed by friendly and unfriendly states in international affairs. Happy reading in 2021.
I’ve started ” Serpents and Saviours ” by S.V.Wolfe , looks very promising fantasy so far.( a new Irish based writer with amazing storytelling skills)
Game of thrones book series. Set in a world of political intrigue devious leaders and ficticious creatures. A real guide to the world of today.
Helen Moorhouse’s latest book, The Gallery of Stolen Souls, was brilliant. It’s not in any of the bookshops though but is available through Amazon
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gallery-Stolen-Souls-Helen-Moorhouse/dp/1781993815
American dirt by Jeanine Cummins, started learning Spanish on the back of it, outstanding writing. Also loved where the crawdads sing (Delia Owens) , the whereabouts of eneas mcnulty (Sebastian Barry), the water dancer (Ta-nehisi Coates), the madd Adam trilogy by Margaret Atwood, anything by Liz Nugget. I listen to books rather than read, but these books had me gripped for different reasons, all tugging at different parts of my soul
Barack Obama – A Promised Land, particularly in audiobook format with him reading it. Great book, incredible story about the type of leader the USA needed and needs to have, now that we’ve seen the madness….
Apart from The Borstal Boy I’ve been binging on box sets on Amazon Prime (Ragnar) and Netflix (Uhtred)
Richie Sadlier’s ‘Recovering’ made light of the realities of life as a professional footballer and how small some of my own problems might be in comparison to his own.
Donal O’Cusack’s ‘Come what may’ is another essential read for any Irish sports fan with a real behind the scenes look at life in hurling.
I discovered Donald Ray Pollock. Nothing comforting about his stories. They’re dark, violent and very grim at times but also sometimes hilarious. But always brilliantly written.
To many to mention, but The Wisdom of The Green Gage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar was amazing as was Shuggie Bain. A Portable Paradise by Roger Robinson is my poetry book of the year.
Read all of the Yuval Noah Harari books in lockdown, great read.
Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall is excellent also.
Yaa Gyasi is a wonderful writer. Her first book, Homegoing is a great read and her new book,Transcendent Kingdom, looks good, too
have your say