More than one million people in Ireland work from home at least some of the time, according to the latest Central Statistic Office figures.
Although working from home, including when schools were closed, became a norm for many during the Covid pandemic years, the dynamic has shifted and debates around a more frequent return to the office continues. AIB found itself at odds with staff and unions after sticking to its plan for staff to work from one of its offices for a minimum of three days a week from January 2026. US financial giant State Street has reportedly told Irish staff that they will need to return to the office four days a week, and in a move that will no doubt be closely watched by employees in Ireland, Meta’s Instagram this week ordered US-based employees to return to the office five days a week from February 2026.
Businessman Denis O’Brien was last month highly critical of working-from-home policies, claiming they are being led by “weak” human resources people “who also want to work from home”. O’Brien argued: “How can people learn, share and solve problems, and improve outcomes [working at home]? Never mind the long-term potential mental health issues. Young people isolated at home will have their learning curtailed because of a lack of human interaction.”
Among the counterarguments is that working from home has allowed people to enjoy a better work-life balance, including a reduction in hours spent commuting. For some of those with children, it has led to a reduction in childcare costs, or their removal altogether. But is working from home with young children, without formal childcare in place, feasible? Or is it even acceptable?
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Michelle Daly lives in Limerick. Her two children are aged seven and 12. She works from home some of the time, and sometimes without childcare. She left her previous job in a different county as the return to the office was under way. She’s self-employed as a marketing and publications consultant, and works with clients. With two young children at home, she says she’s very conscious of office etiquette when working from home, as she thinks people are less tolerant of home-related interruptions than they were during Covid times. “I don’t think it’s professional to have children in the same room as [you when] you’re trying to work. So I struggle with it really, but I don’t have any other option.” Daly’s husband works away a lot.
Her children play with Lego or watch television as she works. Daly tries to schedule calls and meetings for when her children are at school, as much as possible. She says she “can’t seem to get a flexible enough solution” for her childcare needs, adding that the options she has are “haphazard”. “Therefore I’m hesitant to commit to a day in the office”, she explains. “I’m in that middle space where, let’s face it, work is 8.30 to 5.30 or 6. But yet our kids go to school 8:30 to 2:20. The two things don’t mix at all. What are you supposed to do for the next two-and-a-half, three hours?”
Aoife McDonnell, who lives in Co Kildare, has a new baby and a three-year-old. She’s self-employed as a personal assistant looking after email management, website, marketing and social media. “I organise everybody else’s life while trying to do it in my unorganised life,” she says. Her partner has a job that requires him to be on site.
McDonnell tries to work around their young children as best she can. “We don’t have childcare. If it’s not the nanas, we don’t have childcare. And the two nanas are still in their 50s. They’re still working. They’re doing it around their jobs, to help us when they can. Other than that, it’s between naps. It’s when you’re getting a quiet break.”
She finds the juggle difficult. “It’s that guilt of screen time. He is still young, so I am strict. But I don’t know if I’m using it as a rod to beat myself with,” she says of trying to keep her three-year-old occupied when she is working. “I’m trying to throw out some activity to try and buy myself more time … but sometimes it’s with the little fingers on the laptop beside me. And with the child on the lap, trying to bounce them around the room while you’re on a call.”
“We can’t afford full-time childcare”, McDonnell says. “Obviously it’s fantastic being self-employed, it’s flexible around your babies, but it comes with less work. There’s no sick days. Because it is around the kids, there’s less money.”
McDonnell says she is particular about the clients she takes on. “All my clients are female … other self-employed business owners who are mams, who are also trying to balance their businesses around their kids.”
“It works well because this is our mutual perspective … it might be at all hours of the night, all hours of the day, but once you’ve got mutual understanding and we’re all getting our jobs done, and done really well, it’s nice.”
She says that if she was expected to return to an office setting, it would likely force her out of the workforce. “When I weigh it up against childcare, yes … We’re a young family. We’re saving for a mortgage, that side comes into it as well, and the housing crisis ... It just wouldn’t be feasible for us. We’re lucky we can do it the way we do.”
Niall Monk, who lives in north Dublin, has two children aged eight and 14, and is a project developer with FuturEnergy. He avails of hybrid working and, for the most part, when he’s working from home it’s without having formal childcare in place for his youngest child.
His company is “fairly flexible”, he says. “As long as the work gets done they’re happy out.” Without the flexibility he has, his wife’s ability to work in her current role would be compromised too, he explains. His eight-year-old is home sick from school as he speaks and this, he explains, requires a different type of juggle to the days when the boy is in school. “There’s a lot of back and forth,” Monk says. “I’ll work through my lunch. I’ll work late to make up those times.”
Monk believes it is possible to care for his young son and work at the same time. “I’ve got a good relationship with managers, so they know that I’m getting the work done. I think it would be different if they saw the work wasn’t being done ... they’re very understanding.”
On normal days, working from home allows him to drop his son to primary school in the morning . When his son comes home he does his homework and if the weather’s good he’ll go outside to play while his father works. “I can see him on the road from the office window.” In poor weather he’ll play on his tablet or watch TV.
Monk doesn’t find the school summer holidays “too bad” either, as his eight-year-old is outside “playing all day”. “I’ll take an hour for my lunch, we’ll do something. Maybe go for a cycle.” His older boy, meanwhile, occupies himself in outdoor activities during the summer days.
The ability to work from home is critical to the family’s childcare situation, he says. “If they turned around and said you need to be in the office five days a week it would be tough”, he says. Cost has prevented them from accessing formal childcare. “I’ve seen some of the costs and hearing how much it’s costing people. It’s costing some people a salary. They’re just working to pay for child-minding.”
I’m sure there’s plenty of people out there who are completely screwing the system and not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, but that’s going to catch up with you eventually
— Caroline Williams
Caroline Williams works for an engineering company in Kilkenny, but lives in Tipperary. She used to commute, but started working from home during Covid and has continued to do so. Her husband cannot avail of a hybrid working option, she says.
They don’t have formal childcare for their three children, two of whom are in primary school. “We have a one-and-a-half-year-old as well. So she’s here. We just make it work … As she gets more active, more mobile, it may become more of an issue.”
Logistics prevent Williams accessing childcare, she says. The nearest creche is the opposite direction to the children’s school. “We’d be on the road all morning between dropping her out there, dropping the lads to school, me getting back here. I just couldn’t do it. We’re in the car enough.”
Her children “have grown up with this”, she says. “They know I’m at work. Obviously they can come up and down if they need to. But they know they can’t be shouting the place down and whatever. They’ve actually just gotten used to the idea and they generally do just tip away themselves.”
Williams has also adapted her hours to work around her children as best she can. “I start work at 4am … I have half my day done before anyone has even gotten out of bed.” She admits it’s a lot of pressure but also says “it’s not forever”.
Her nine- and 10-year-old children are “generally good to entertain themselves” with art or Lego when she’s working. “It’s more for the younger one. If I have to go on a Zoom call, I will absolutely say to the lads, ‘throw on the TV’, whatever keeps her quiet.”
Why are they trying to parent as well as work? It’s not a childcare solution. [Working from home] wasn’t designed for that
— HR professional Caroline Collins
She doesn’t think it’s fair to imply people cannot work from home without childcare. “I am getting up at four o’clock in the morning to ensure I’m getting my work done … I’m sure there’s plenty of people out there who are completely screwing the system and not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, but that’s going to catch up with you eventually.”
“I’ve had these conversations with my own employer. He knows what I’m doing. He knows my hours are not exactly nine to five. He doesn’t care. Everything is getting done … I’ve often said, I’m on the phone all the time. If you do need me for something when I’m away from the desk, I’ve no issue with that.”
Caroline Collins is a HR professional. She says “at the most practical level there are health and safety considerations” when it comes to working from home without childcare, as well as “employer considerations”.
“If you’re working from home it is meant to be like you are in the office, and therefore if you’re minding children at the same time it’s neither one thing or the other.”
“Covid, I think, confused a lot of the issue. People were working, and parenting, and educating from home. And it all got a bit muddled. But that’s not actually the benchmark. If I approach it from a HR perspective, I’d nearly see it as a women’s rights issue as much as anything else.”
Collins refers to what she terms the “office housework” that some women can take on, such as arranging birthday cakes and taking notes at meetings. “That can risk diminishing their credibility and their gravitas. It’s actually a bit similar with work from home because we know from research that women continue to shoulder the burden of housework more so than partners. So when we get into the work-from-home space, I would think the more important question to ask is: Why are they trying to double job? Why are they trying to parent as well as work? It’s not a childcare solution. It wasn’t designed for that.”
“The employer’s perspective is that for reasons of effectiveness and productivity you can’t simultaneously be the primary childcare for children at the same time as working from home,” she continues.
“If your child is young enough they can’t be left unsupervised and you’re also trying to work, there’s actually a health and safety piece … In the same way you wouldn’t bring a bassinet or a buggy into the office and try to mind any babies or children off the side of your desk, the solution to that isn’t working from home.”
Collins says none of this is meant to undermine the huge issue that childcare is for working parents, and one that she says disproportionately affects women. But these are issues that shouldn’t be conflated, she adds.
As a HR expert, she advises that parents who work from home should “absolutely” have childcare in place. “For them, for their career, to prevent there becoming a disciplinary or performance issue. And also, genuinely, for the health and welfare of their children.”
Meanwhile, Róisín Boyle, of Siptu’s Legal Rights Unit says: “When Siptu hears that our members who are parents are facing difficulties in securing childcare for primary-age schoolchildren and younger, for reasons such as affordability, dependability, accessibility, waiting lists, locations and operating times, it is evident that the State is not stepping up sufficiently for these members.”
“Due to years of underfunding in the early years sector, the supply of places cannot meet the demand, particularly in urban areas. Furthermore, there is a current staff turnover of 25 per cent because of inadequate pay and conditions.”
Siptu believes the best way to resolve this is “for State childcare facilities to be established across the country, prioritising areas of unmet demand and for the responsibility of payroll within the childcare facilities to be assumed by the State.”
Georgia* is a small-business owner and an employer. She’s also a parent. Following a couple of bad experiences with remote-working employees, she does not think she would hire a remote worker again.
“Clocking in when [they] weren’t working,” was a particular challenge she says she faced with previous employees. “Doing other things on our time … it became a pattern.” She adds: “I think from an employer point of view it’s very, very hard to monitor a remote worker.”
“Saying that, if the work is getting done there’s no need to monitor them. But it wasn’t getting done in our case,” she explains.
“How could you get any work done with small kids?”
Georgia is so certain it’s not possible that she admits she wouldn’t hire a woman with small children if she had any inkling there was no childcare in place.
She was hiring recently and also decided she wouldn’t hire anyone under the age of 30. “That was more of maturity thing; most of them are snowflakes. They’re afraid to work,” she says.
She won’t hire a woman she suspects will leave to have a baby either, she admits. “I got lots of fantastic CVs, fabulous CVs, very well qualified … but my issue was, ‘She has one child; she’s probably going to go off and have another,’ which means I’ll train her and have her for six months and then she’ll be gone again. In big corporations that’s fine. But for a small business that’s just not workable”.
[ ‘I had always wanted to be a stay-at-home mum ... but I’m exhausted’Opens in new window ]
Barbara*, a public-sector worker, has three primary-school-aged children. She has no childcare on her work-from-home days. “Finances” are the reason for this, she explains.
“My circumstances have changed in relation to income”. She’s not sure how she’d manage if she was expected to return to the office more.
“It’s a nightmare trying to manage work with no childcare in place”, she admits. “I hide out in my kitchen. I have them warned when I’m in meetings that they have to stay in the sittingroom. There’s lots of bribes. I stick on the television to keep them entertained”.
She doesn’t know if her employers realise she has no childcare. “I’m always playing catch-up. I try to get work done when they’re at school, and catch up when they’re in bed. I’m working in the car while the children are at their sports training”, she explains. She feels the pressure. “You’re always exhausted. You’re always stressed. You never have time for yourself.”
She suspects a return to the office is on the cards. “I don’t know how we’re going to manage,” she says. “The stresses are incredible but, that being said, at least it means I can continue to work.”
She tries to minimise the impact of school holidays by saving as much annual leave as possible until then, but says it’s another juggle.
* Names have been changed.
