Absenteeism costs small businesses more than €490m a year, according to figures by the Small Firms Association.

While some 63% of Irish workers will consider pretending they are sick for a day off work.

The Small firms Association says that last year more than four million days were lost to sickness.

One way of improving the rate of absenteeism and promoting positive mental health at the same time is to introduce duvet days - or 'mental health days'.

Swedish companies allow workers to take five or six such days a year.

While employees of Richard Branson's Virgin Group are given unlimited holidays - as long as they get their jobs done. The initiative was announced last September.

Junior Minister for Mental Health Kathleen Lynch says when it comes to 'duvet days,' we need to differentiate between people who need them and people who just want extra days off.

She says they should only be given to people who genuinely need them.

Cary Cooper is professor of organisational psychology and health at MBS Manchester University.

"A lot of people are turning up for work when they're ill...not because they necessarily feel sorry about their colleagues, but they feel job insecure" he told Newstalk Breakfast.

"Turning up to work ill costs more than actually sickness absence - because you don't deliver and you usually get other people infected".

"Sickness presenteeism - where you turn up ill, you show facetime but you don't deliver any added value".