The firm made the move after a social media post by Kevin Shields, the voice of the emergency medical dispatcher at the National Ambulance Service (NAS), struck a chord with the team.

In the post, he talked about how morale is being chipped away as “The respect is gone. The appreciation is gone. The understanding and patience is gone”. He also mentioned that there are no more coffee and meals, no more ‘thank yous’, no more heart-shaped lights in hotel windows, no more neighbours waving us off to work.

Daireann Gibson, managing partner at Gibson & Associates, said: “Last week, we saw Kevin’s Facebook post - a healthcare worker in Donegal - and it hit a nerve with myself and the team. The post painted a very stark picture of how Kevin and his co-workers were experiencing both work and life at the moment in the midst of this global pandemic and the third lockdown. It suggested that the same level of support and gratitude wasn’t there as it had been previously in March and April of last year.

“At the end of the post, Kevin pleaded that he and his co-workers were doing their very best at a very difficult time. We can only speak for ourselves here but after seeing Kevin’s post, we wanted to say that we are truly grateful for all the work that you and your co-workers are doing at this time. Your efforts in the middle of this wave and the pandemic, in general, are truly heroic.

“We just wanted to let the frontline workers know that we have not forgotten about you, we acknowledge your hard work in keeping us safe, and we say thank you very much.”