“Good Friday is not a public holiday and is a normal working day,” the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) tells us in its guidance on entitlements to days off. “The terms bank holiday and public holiday are often used interchangeably in the Republic, but they are not the same thing,” said Leeanne Connolly, Head of Employment Services at HR consultants Peninsula Ireland. “A public holiday, on the other hand, is a day when employees have a legal right to a day off or extra pay. “Unless a business decides otherwise, employees are not legally entitled to a day off work on Good Friday.”How many public holidays are there? 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.

Source: The Irish Times April 03, 2026 07:51 UTC