{"id":379011,"date":"2026-04-02T23:17:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T23:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/379011\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T23:17:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T23:17:08","slug":"is-good-friday-a-bank-holiday-who-works-and-who-does-not-according-to-the-law-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/379011\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Good Friday a bank holiday? Who works and who does not, according to the law \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cGood Friday is not a public holiday and is a normal working day,\u201d the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) tells us in its guidance on entitlements to days off. While \u201cnormal\u201d might be overstating it slightly, the sad truth is that most of us will be expected to put in a shift <\/a>as usual by our employers.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s a bank holiday, right?<\/p>\n

Yes, but that only means that the banks will be closed and their employees will get the day off<\/a>. As it happens, many public and civil servants will not be working either. Quite a few workers in the private sector get the day too, but there is no legal entitlement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There has, however, been a gradual normalisation of the day in many workplaces with more shops opening now, for instance, than was the case, particularly outside Dublin, compared to a few decades ago. <\/p>\n

This weekend, on the other hand, some of the supermarket chains are closing on Sunday, and some are operating limited hours on Monday, but all say they are opening as normal on Good Friday. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe terms bank holiday and public holiday <\/a>are often used interchangeably in the Republic, but they are not the same thing,\u201d said Leeanne Connolly, Head of Employment Services at HR consultants Peninsula Ireland.<\/p>\n

\u201cA bank holiday is a day when banks and other financial institutions are closed,\u201d she said. \u201cA public holiday<\/a>, on the other hand, is a day when employees have a legal right to a day off or extra pay. More specifically, full-time employees are entitled to a day off with pay, an extra day of annual leave, an extra day of pay, or a day off with pay within a month of the public holiday. <\/p>\n

\u201cUnless a business decides otherwise, employees are not legally entitled to a day off work on Good Friday.\u201d<\/p>\n

How many public holidays are there?<\/p>\n

Ten, which is slightly fewer than most European countries enjoy, although the addition of the one for St Brigid\u2019s day <\/a>has narrowed the gap slightly.<\/p>\n

The next is on Monday, when, as mentioned above, full-time employees are entitled to the day off with pay<\/a>. If they work, they are normally entitled to an additional payment at the same rate they are usually paid.<\/p>\n

If an employee is not normally rostered to work, then they will be entitled to one-fifth of their normal weekly wage extra.<\/p>\n

What about part-time workers?<\/p>\n

Part-time workers who have worked at least 40 hours over the previous five weeks also have an entitlement to a benefit, usually through a day off, additional leave or a payment based on a proportion of their weekly pay.<\/p>\n

The WRC makes clear, meanwhile, that if a person leaves a place of employment in the week before the public holiday, having worked there through the previous four weeks, they are entitled to be paid for the holiday.<\/p>\n

In addition, those on maternity leave, parental leave, paternity leave, adoptive leave, or domestic violence leave are entitled to benefit from the public holiday, while those on long-term sick leave are generally not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cGood Friday is not a public holiday and is a normal working day,\u201d the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43,6465],"class_list":{"0":"post-379011","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-workplace-relations-commission"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}