The burnout the State already measures

Ireland does not have a visibility problem with public sector burnout. The research is done, published and sitting in plain sight. What it has is a response problem, because the support still arrives mostly after the crisis the research predicted.

Take teaching, the profession the State measures most closely. A DCU study of over 1,000 Irish teachers, published in April 2025, found that around 85% report moderate to high work-related burnout, and 42% say they are unlikely to remain in teaching because of stress and burnout. Read that second figure again. Nearly half a measured workforce telling researchers, on the record, that they are minded to leave.

The numbers are not new, and they are not improving

The wider picture has been visible for years. ESRI research from 2016 found that a work-related stress, anxiety or depression absence in Ireland averages 17 days, the longest of any category of work-related illness. When someone finally goes out with stress, they are gone for the better part of a month, and in a school or a public office that gap lands directly on colleagues who were already stretched.

More recently, CIPD Ireland and the University of Limerick reported in May 2024 that mental health accounted for 22% of Irish workplace absence in 2023, drawing level with acute medical conditions for the first time. Mental health is now matching surgery and serious illness as a reason Irish workers are missing from work. That is the scale of what the data already shows.

Measured after, supported after

Here is the uncomfortable pattern. Nearly every figure above is a measurement of damage already done. Burnout reported, absence counted, intentions to leave recorded. The State is diligent about measuring its own workforce, and the measuring almost always happens downstream of the harm. Support tends to follow the same shape, an occupational health referral once someone is already out, a helpline for those in crisis, a return-to-work plan after the 17 days.

In clinical terms this is arriving at the fire with excellent documentation. The teacher who leaves in June was exhausted in January. The clerical officer out for a month in autumn was running on empty in spring. Between those two points there was a long stretch when a conversation would have changed the trajectory, and in most public workplaces nothing was scheduled to make that conversation happen.

What early support would actually look like

For a public sector leader, principal or department head, the practical question is what upstream support looks like. We would describe it simply. Monthly, confidential one-to-one sessions for every member of staff, delivered by qualified psychologists and accredited psychotherapists from an outside organisation, independent of the employer and outside the management reporting line, with the same clinician each time. Families covered, because what a teacher or nurse carries rarely starts at the staffroom door.

Individual sessions are private. Names and stories never leave the room, and GDPR is observed throughout. What leadership receives is The Listening Post, a monthly report of anonymised themes, enough to see that workload strain is building in one area or that a change programme is costing more than expected, while there is still time to adjust. It also helps demonstrate compliance with the duty of care under Section 8 of the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005, evidence of a system in place rather than good intentions on file.

Prevention rather than intervention, in other words. The measuring has been done for a decade. The next figure worth publishing is what happens when support arrives before the damage does.