18
Oct
There are 9 public holidays in Ireland each year. Public holidays sometimes called a bank holiday, are:
- New Year’s Day (1 January)
- St. Patrick’s Day (17 March)
- Easter Monday
- First Monday in May, June, August
- Last Monday in October
- Christmas Day (25 December)
- St. Stephen’s Day (26 December)
Most employees are entitled to paid leave on public holidays. One exception is part-time employees who have not worked for their employer at least 40 hours in total in the 5 weeks before the public holiday.
If you qualify for public holiday benefit you are entitled to one of the following:
- A paid day off on the public holiday
- An additional day of annual leave
- An additional day’s pay
- A paid day off within a month of the public holiday
Part-time employees
If you have worked for your employer at least 40 hours in the 5 weeks before the public holiday and the public holiday falls on a day you normally work you are entitled to a day’s pay for the public holiday. If you are required to work that day you are entitled to an additional day’s pay.
If you do not normally work on that particular day you should receive one-fifth of your weekly pay. Even if you are never rostered to work on a public holiday you are entitled to one-fifth of your weekly pay as compensation for the public holiday.
If you do not have normal daily or weekly working hours, an average of your day’s pay or the fifth of your weekly pay is calculated over the 13 weeks you worked before the public holiday.
In all of these situations your employer may choose to give you paid time off instead of pay for the public holiday.
Public holidays falling on a weekend
If the public holiday falls on a day which is not a normal working day for that business (for example, on Saturday or Sunday) you are still entitled to benefit for that public holiday. Where a public holiday falls on a weekend, you do not have any automatic legal entitlement to have the next working day off work.