Fulfilling our Duties

Áine Collins CPA, IOD, Founder of Blueprint Consulting and Chair of the Dublin Chapter

As an accountant and business consultant, 2020 has been a difficult, yet interesting year. I specialise in bringing financial effectiveness and developing business strategy for SME’s and working as a non-executive director to businesses. The last 9 months has seen us focussing more on successfully pivoting, creative design, and staff engagement.

The businesses that have fared best are those that had strong and transparent leadership in place, a flexible outlook on how to achieve it, and a clear focus on what they wanted to achieve. It has been nothing short of miraculous to see what people have been able to accomplish in such a short time, reframing products, and services, operating with less budgets, and championing creative innovation in all areas of business process, people engagement and agile leadership has become the new buzz word of 2020.

Dublin has struggled, as most cities have across the globe during this pandemic, thankfully rates have fallen in recent weeks, and businesses have continued even though many are struggling. This has been helped by 83% of Dubliners and Irish people who prioritise buying local, either in person or online. This is something to be proud of. In a year when the first, second, and third-quarter revenue of Amazon jumped 26%, 40%, and 37% year over year, and Jeff Bezos’ personal wealth has risen by $70 million, it is truly heartening to see so many Irish people deliberately deciding to support local enterprises and we hope this will continue.

We are looking forward to returning to a what will be a new normal in Q2 and Q3 of 2021, when we will be welcoming back our overseas visitors to exciting and busy networking and training events.

In the meantime, it’s important that we fulfil our patriotic duty over Christmas and keep watching Netflix, perhaps with some cocoa and a mince pie or two and continue to buy local.

Dublin at Christmas