Nicholas Delia lives in a different time zone to the rest of us. This isn’t because the 33-year-old from Malta has moved to a faraway country. It’s because he works nights at the Cork International Hotel.
“As the night manager, I work from 11pm to 7.15am five nights a week,” he says. “I’m awake when everyone else is fast asleep and asleep when they’re wide awake.”
Delia is a member of a growing nocturnal workforce. The 2023 Labour Force Survey found that 22.5% of employees in Ireland worked night shifts, up from 15% in 2012.
While there may be a demand for night-shift workers in emergency services, the hospitality sector, 24-hour garages, and supermarkets, behavioural neuroscientist and director of the Chronobiology and Sleep Research Laboratory at Maynooth University, Professor Andrew Coogan, points out…