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On Friday, March 27th, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announced the government’s decision that everyone should stay at home until April 12th, 2020.
Under the latest public health guidelines, people may only leave their homes in the following situations:
- To travel to and from work, or for purposes of work, only where it’s an essential health, social care or other essential service and cannot be done from home.
- To shop for household goods, essential food, beverage or collect a meal.
- To attend medical appointments and collect medicines and other health products.
- For vital family reasons. This includes providing care to children, elderly or vulnerable people.
- To take brief individual physical exercise within two kilometres of your home. Children from your household may also go with you as long as you adhere to strict two-metre physical distancing.
- For farming purposes, that is food production or care of animals.
The government advice that all employees, where possible, should work from home remains in place.
What action should your business take?
Firstly, refer to the public health guidelines here to see if your business qualifies as an essential service provider. Businesses that are providing an essential service should first notify employees that they are still required to work.
Those employees (including sub-contractors) should then be provided with a letter confirming that you’re their employer and that the employee is permitted to travel to work to carry out their duties as an essential worker.
Action employees must take
Essential employees, or employees that belong to a category of essential employees are permitted to travel to and from work.
When travelling to and from work, these employees should bring either work identification or the letter from your business outlined above confirming that they’re an essential employee, as well as one other form of identification.
