Samuel Beckett: the Nobel Prize-winning Foxrock native is yet another example of Ireland's native genius

Recessions are tough. How do I know? Because I run a small business in London and believe me, I know. Everything takes twice as long to do in a recession – winning business, executing business, collecting money from people who owe it to you, dealing with staff, you name it. Above all, dealing with any banks, and particularly those that you are trying to borrow money from, takes forever.

And then I have an added burden; I am a woman. One with three children – all boys – and a husband. As fellow working women will know, just because a woman works does not excuse her from having to run the household. Why is that? It seems manifestly unfair. But I get my own back. Every week, I write an account of my life in the Weekend Financial Times, where I refer to my sons as 'cost centres' and lament my husband's obsession with golf.

I have done this for more than 10 years, but suddenly, and without warning, in 2006, the paper decided to translate it into Chinese and post it onto its Chinese website. The first I knew of this was when I received an email from a Chinese reader asking me for the definition of 'corporate husband'. Apparently she had been reading me in Chinese and then went to the English version to see what I had originally written. The FT had translated my 'corporate' husband as 'economic'.

'Economic' means, among other things, "having practical or industrial significance or uses: affecting material resources". Yes, my husband has a myriad of practical uses, and he does also affect material resources. Practical uses include changing lightbulbs and getting rid of spiders, although he flatly refuses to assemble Ikea furniture. He affects material resources in both a positive way – he earns a good salary in his job as a wine merchant and gets 40% off all our household wine – and a negative one. True, he doesn't cost much to run in the way of food but his golf club memberships are not cheap. Then there is the need to accumulate golf clubs made out of material that would do the Space Shuttle proud. So perhaps 'economic' is a good translation.

To support this family, I manage a small business in London which employs about 20 people. It is a professional services business and its only real asset, apart from some ageing computer equipment, is its people. I try and look after them as well as I can; they all get fed breakfast and lunch each day, they all get pension contributions and private health insurance paid for by the company, they all get extensive holiday entitlement. And we invest in training; many of our team have postgrad degrees and other qualifications paid for by the firm.

Even our secretaries get trained. My former secretary, Lovely Lucinda, said one day that she wanted to go on a flower-arranging course. After this, she said, she would do all the arrangements for the office. This was a two-day course and she won first prize for her arrangement, a photo of which she sent me and at which I briefly glanced. It looked very complicated, unlike anything I had ever seen before. On investigation it turned out that she had been on an underwater flower-arranging course. No, this did not involve her arranging flowers with mask and snorkel, but arranging them in such a way that they were displayed under the water.

Most of the people I employ are girls, and as they get older they marry and then have children. I try to be as encouraging as I can as they try to juggle family and career as I have done, but there is no doubt that the way to shatter the glass ceiling in the workplace is to shatter the myth that women can have it all. I have five priorities very firmly in the following order; work, my children, my husband (yes, in that order), my friends, and then if there is any time left at all, me. What that means is that when I decide to do something like learn to fly, something gives, and that something is my friends, or things like going to the gym or making sure that I eat properly.

I am also a great believer in outsourcing. I outsourced all three 'cost centres' to boarding school almost as soon as they could walk, and have at various stages of the economic cycle employed a vast array of domestic staff. More importantly, I have done away with both guilt and regret, both of which are a waste of emotional energy. I focus on what can be achieved – my children and husband are happy and healthy, my business is profitable and cash positive. No, I don't get to see them every day, no, my house is not as clean as I would like it to be, no I have not yet potted out the herbs I was given at Christmas, no, I have not yet sorted out the double glazing in the kitchen at the office. But surely we should make sure that we stress about what is important? All these things will get done in time.

I am bringing my rather individual perspective on combining work with raising a family to Ireland this coming week. I am planning, weather permitting, to fly myself as I have spent the recession learning to fly. This means I can avoid the hassle of the main airport, the ridiculous baggage allowance or Aer Arann (17kg – why not 20kg like everyone else) or the pared-down service of Ryanair where I would be worried that someone would charge me to breathe. I am looking forward to it; unlike many who are seeking to bracket Ireland with Greece, Portugal and Spain I know that it is a much more resilient country than the others. Four Nobel prizes (all for literature, so you know that you can communicate well), a savings ratio that is close to the EU average and a government that understands how to encourage business, plus a population that is educated, talented and resourceful, means that Ireland will never, in my view, have a recession that it cannot cope with. However tough they are.

Mrs Moneypenny will be speaking in Dublin this Thursday at an event for HR managers organised by Aviva health insurance