A Different View with Dave O’Connell

We’ve just come through another Bank Holiday Weekend – a strange phenomenon when you think of it, given that we’re still carrying the scars as a nation from our multitude of past troubles with the actual banks.

Some of us don’t get Bank Holidays off in the first place, so perhaps that’s why we’re so miserable about others enjoying them, but really – even if you do get them – it’s just a way of putting off today’s work until tomorrow.

It’s not like someone else is going to come in on the Monday as you’re living it large in the local, so that it’s all finished when you get back from your long weekend.

We’re now up to ten Bank Holidays in Ireland – that’s an additional two weeks of annual leave in old money – and while we don’t want to come across as Killjoys or misery guts, you could make a genuine case for about half of them.

Christmas Day and St Stephen’s Day are a given; so too is New Year’s Day – and we’ll throw in St Patrick’s Day and Easter Monday just to be fair about it.

But the August Bank Holiday Weekend? October Bank Holiday? St Brigid’s Day – Leo Varadkar’s lasting (perhaps only) gift to the nation?

Isn’t half the country off in August anyway? The Dáil is closed, the schools are closed; there are more Irish accents to be heard on the Canary Islands than you’d hear in all of Cork and Clare.

The original idea for adding on the St Brigid’s Bank Holiday was to remember all of those who had died or suffered during the Covid-19 pandemic – and that would be a very good reason for having a once-off day off.

But really it was just Leo playing the populist card, leaving businesses to pick up the bill for lost productivity.

Anyway, aside from all that nit-picking, what sort of an oxymoron is a Bank Holiday in the first place? Half the small towns and villages in Ireland now have a permanent Bank Holiday – because they don’t have any bank.