Press Statement

Preasráiteas

18 August 2020

Go to release: Business Impact of COVID-19 Survey 29 Jun to 26 Jul 2020

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (18 August 2020) published the results of the fifth wave of its Business Impact of COVID-19 Survey (BICS). Wave Five 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, 28 July and Wednesday, 12 August 2020. The response rate to the survey was 24.9%. Commenting on the results, Statistician, Colin Hanley, said:

‘The results show that on 26 July 2020, 96.1% of responding enterprises were trading in some capacity, 3.0% had temporarily ceased trading while 0.9% had ceased trading permanently.

 More than half of responding enterprises (54.1%) reported a reduction in turnover of 10% or more compared to normal expectations during the four-week period Monday 29 June to Sunday 26 July. For the following four-week period Monday 27 July to Sunday 23 August, 39.9% of enterprises forecasted turnover being within normal expectations.

 An additional question was introduced to the fifth wave of the survey related to business costs exceeding turnover from the beginning of the lockdown on 16 March to 26 July. Of the responding enterprises, 20.4% reported that business costs had exceeded turnover during this period.

 Respondents indicated that an average of 59.2% of staff worked remotely for office based enterprises, compared to an average of 13.7% of staff which worked remotely for non-office based enterprises. During the four-week period 29 June to 26 July 2020, an average of 18.2% of staff returned from temporary leave to their normal place of work, while 8.5% returned from remote working.

 More than half of responding enterprises (54.3%) have mandatory PPE in the workplace while 45.3% have provided protective screening for staff.

 Among the top two concerns for businesses operating during the COVID-19 pandemic was an increase of COVID-19 cases leading to another lockdown (64.1%) and reduced demand due to lower consumer confidence (46.8%).

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

 The sixth wave of the CSO’s Business Impact of COVID-19 Survey will be distributed on 24 August 2020.

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

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