It seems we Irish love to please the boss and will do anything for promotion, even if it means compromising our personal lives for our careers. Women in particular are renowned for working for free. More than half of females reported that no overtime hours were paid and some sectors were much higher than average.

Almost 79pc of employees who worked overtime in the female-dominated education sector reported nonpayment, while those working in financial and other business services (67pc) and agriculture, forestry and fishing (50pc) also reported higher than average non-payment rates.

The Irish nation is now engrossed in a long-hours culture as more and more people feel that to be in with a chance for promotion or career advancement they must put in longer hours at the office.

"It happens because of peer pressure, workplace pressure and pressure driven largely by employers.

It's never overt, but it's understood, " says Macdara Doyle, communications officer at the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU).

"Obviously there are some businesses where you get a seasonal blitz period. That's fair enough and everybody understands it, but to have this culture running over a long period of time is unsustainable and unworkable."

According to figures from the ICTU, employees who work overtime and are not paid effectively subsidise employers to the tune of �?�14,559 a year. This works out at �?�280 a week. However, instilling a workplace culture where longer hours are the norm decreases productivity, says Doyle.

"Study after study and even common sense will tell you that the longer you work the less productive you become. It's a sign of bad management. It doesn't increase productivity whatsoever; it actually diminishes it. It's a silly macho throwback that really should be dumped once and for all."

At a European level, a study by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions on working time developments in 2004 found that Ireland's average working week is above the EU average of 38.6 hours.

According to the report, the average working week for Ireland was 39 hours in 2004 and it came eleventh out of the 25 EU countries. If you exclude seven of the accession countries and the two candidate countries of Romania and Bulgaria, Ireland was second in the list, coming behind Greece and with the same average working week as Luxembourg.

The statutory maximum working week in Ireland is 48 hours. While this figure is the same as many other countries in the EU, it is much higher than the 40hour maximum week in Austria, Portugal and Norway, and the 38-hour maximum week in Belgium.

The long-hours culture in Ireland could be a result of the lack of flexible working arrangements here. The CSO survey also threw up another interesting point.

Less than 16.5pc can take advantage of flexible working arrangements.

"A lot of people are having trouble with commuting time. It's making work hellish and forcing them into an impossible position in starting a family, " says Doyle.