Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 23 May 2023
256. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the estimated full-year cost of introducing three new bank holidays; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [24035/23]
View answerThere are a range of estimates of the cost of introducing an additional public holiday. An impact assessment undertaken by the Office of National Statistics in the UK in 2022 estimated that an additional public holiday for the Platinum Jubilee would have a net cost of £2.39 billion. In the context of UK Gross National Income (GNI) of £2,505 billion in 2022 – the additional public holiday was estimated to account for approximately 0.1% of GNI (0.107% on a GDP basis). This contrasts with previous analysis by the UK Office for National Statistics which estimated the economic impact of an additional one-off public holiday in 2012 to be between 0.3% and 0.4% of GDP.
A recent 2022 study on the causal effects of public holidays on economic growth, which utilised a global panel of national holidays for over 200 countries over the period 2000-2019, estimated that 0.08% of annual GDP is foregone for each additional day of public holiday.
Based on the above estimates, the introduction of three additional public holidays would have an estimated cost ranging from between 0.24% to 1.2% of Gross National Income. The Department of Finance projects Modified Gross National Income of €283.7 billion in 2023 – meaning three additional public holidays would have an estimated cost of between €680 million to €3.4 billion.
In assessing the impact of public holidays there can be difficulty in separating the costs from the benefits. For example, certain sectors – such as retail, accommodation and food – may see a boost to economic activity while in other sectors (such as agriculture) the costs of a public holiday may be lower due to natural processes continuing throughout the holiday. Evidence also suggests that there is a level of ‘bounce-back’ in terms of the loss in production associated with public holidays which is recovered either through higher effort on other working days or effective management of scheduling. There are also likely to be strong well-being benefits from public holidays which are difficult to quantify.
An underlying assumption in the analysis of public holiday costs is that the impact of each additional public holiday is identical and transitory. However, there is likely a limit to the number of public holidays which could be incorporated into each year before each public holiday would begin to have a larger proportionate cost to national output, this would take the form of interrupting production schedules, or missing critical tasks to a greater extent, and would ultimately be more costly than the above analysis suggests.
The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and the Department of Social Protection are currently undertaking an assessment of the impact of a range of changes to working conditions. This work will include a fuller assessment of the impact of an additional public holiday in Ireland and is due for completion by the end of 2023.
