This Bill is not one that could be described as of any very general importance. It is purely to deal with a small matter of administration, which I hope I will be able to make clear.
By the Bank Holidays Act, 1871, certain days in the year set out in the schedule, viz., Easter Monday, the Monday in Whitsun week, the first Monday in August, and the 26th day of December, if a week day, were made Bank Holidays, and power was therefore given to Her Majesty in Council to declare certain other days to be Bank Holidays. The powers of proclamation conferred by the Act were to be exercised as regards Ireland by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in Council. After the passing of this Act it was found that its provisions related solely to Banks, and accordingly by the Bank Holidays Act, 1871, Extensions and Amendments Act, 1875, provisions of the 1871 Act were extended to Government offices and the powers given to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in Council were extended to holidays under the latter Act. Article 28 of the Constitution reads as follows:
"At a General Election for Dáil Eireann the polls (exclusive of those members for the Universities) shall be held on the same day throughout the country, and that day shall be a day not later than thirty days after the date of the dissolution and shall be proclaimed a public holiday. Dáil Eireann shall meet within one month of such day, and shall unless earlier dissolved continue for four years from the date of its first meeting, and not longer. Dáil Eireann may not at any time be dissolved except on the advice of the Executive Council."
The powers of proclaiming a Bank Holiday given by the 1871 and 1875 Acts would, it is submitted, now be properly exercisable by the Governor-General on the advice of the Executive Council. It has, however, apparently been considered the proper construction of Article 28 of the Constitution that the Executive Council alone is the proper body to proclaim a public holiday under that Article. Furthermore, as the law now stands, a public holiday declared under that Article would not be a Bank Holiday for the purposes of the 1871 and 1875 Acts. To cure this defect and to get rid of the anomaly of having two separate methods of declaring or proclaiming public holidays in the country, it has been thought advisable to introduce this Bill. Section 1 of the Bill simply empowers the Executive Council to appoint any day to be a Bank Holiday and provides that such day shall be a Bank Holiday both for the purposes of the 1871 and of the 1875 Acts. Section 2 empowers the Executive Council to change the dates of Bank Holidays in special cases, and Section 3 provides for the method of proclaiming such holidays.
Deputies will see, therefore, that the Bill causes no important change, and bears merely on a matter of administrative convenience. It is yet a matter that might prove of practical importance administratively, and the sole object of the Bill is to avoid unnecessary duplication and overlapping in the matter of proclaiming public holidays and Bank Holidays. I move the Second Reading.