Double bank Holiday being considered for 2022

A double Bank Holiday around St Patrick's Day is being considered by Government. 

Speaking on Today with Claire Byrne, Leo Varadkar said the earlier proposed date of January 31, St Brigid's Day would be inappropriate considering the current situation in hospitals and that people would have to have "a bit of notice so that they can work out their shifts and so on" adding how these days can be disruptive for the health service with GPs closed and hospitals "operate on a skeleton staff".

The Tánaiste said that he believed it was too late to announce a holiday and these dates but said there could be a one-off double bank holiday in March 2022 instead.

"One option we're looking at is the 18th of March, so you'd have a double bank holiday which would be the 17th and 18th of March for St. Patrick's Day, two years since the pandemic began in many ways, at least in Ireland.

"And then what we would do after that from 2023 onwards would be a permanent new bank holiday for St Brigid's Day but that decision isn't made yet, but we just thought it would be inappropriate to announce tomorrow that we're having another public holiday."

The extra bank holiday would serve as a day of remembrance and to thank frontline workers for their tremendous hard work throughout the pandemic.