September 9th, 2007
What is the best feeling in the world? Winning the lottery? The elation that accompanies the birth of your child? Nah, it’s that special thrill when you wake up at 6.58am on a Monday morning, dreading the imminent pealing of the alarm clock, but then remember that it’s a bank holiday and you can go back to sleep. For sheer joy, that moment can’t be beaten.
Wily politicians must have wondered if they could somehow tap into the goodwill generated on a bank holiday Monday morning when the national workforce grins sleepily to itself and snuggles back under the duvet. They need wonder no more: Ruairi Quinn of the Labour party has had an idea. He wants less labour and more party, and is demanding two extra public holidays a year.
Quinn, the employment spokesman for the party, justified his idea on the grounds that an International Labour Organisation survey has found Irish people are the second most productive in the world, behind Americans. I’m a little flummoxed as to how this could be the case, unless time spent at work equates to productivity. If spending hours on Facebook counts as being productive, well, a big gold star and a day off for me.
More public holidays, argued Quinn, could also help the economy as they might lead to such revenue-generating events such as the Cork Jazz Festival. Hmmm. Either he didn’t really think that through or he has a poor grasp of basic mathematics for a former minister for finance.
The Cork Jazz Festival brings in about €20m in tourist spending. The cost of losing a day of national productivity – according to the Small Firms Association, which ran the rule when a day of mourning was proposed for Pope John Paul II in 2005 – is €600m. So each new public holiday would leave us €580m short. But what’s a billion euro a year when we’ve all got two extra days off work?
Leaving dubious figures to one side, Quinn did have a point when he said that two new public holidays would bring us in line with the European average. We have nine public holidays at present, they have 11. In this case, his maths is spot on.
In addition, a couple of extra holidays might help the average Irish worker to relax a little. While Official Ireland clocks off for at least a fortnight at Christmas, 10 days at Easter, the whole of August and a week each for Cheltenham and the Galway Races, the rest of us feel too pressurised to take holidays. Survey results released by IrishJobs.ie last week showed that more than 40% of Irish workers take a week or less for their main annual holiday and almost a third take work-related phone calls while they’re away.
So, in the interests of national wellbeing and although it makes no economic sense whatsoever, I’m going to support Ruairi Quinn in his campaign. To help matters along, I’d like to suggest a few possible national holidays.
Celtic Tiger Day: A day of remembrance. It was great while it lasted, but now it’s well and truly done for and we are left struggling with unsteady consumer confidence and debilitating personal debt.
Health Service Day: See Celtic Tiger Day (but replace ‘unsteady consumer confidence and debilitating personal debt’ with ‘homemade poultices and splints made from old hurleys’.)
Binge drinking day: Perhaps if there was one special day when it was socially acceptable to get absolutely slaughtered in public, fall down repeatedly and vomit indiscriminately, then everyone would drink in moderation for the rest of the year. Oh sorry, I forgot. We already have St Patrick’s Day.
Non-national Day: Let’s clap ourselves on the back for becoming a diverse, multicultural society. We could have colourful, inclusive celebrations up and down the country, after which all the Irish-born people could slope off and get hammered down the local, while having awed conversations about how many of “them” there are now, not that we’re racist or anything.
Property Prices Day: Ban discussion of house prices apart from one day when the media could indulge in over-the-top scaremongering, and dinner party bores could hold forth on how they had made €300,000 on the house and thank God they bought when they did.
Dangerous Driving Day: More than 530,000 penalty point notices have now been issued, but I’m not sure points really deter idiot drivers. Give them a special day of impunity when they could speed, drink and drive, overtake on bends, break red lights, spin anti-clockwise around roundabouts and whizz the wrong way down dual carriageways. The survivors might drive a little more cautiously for the rest of the year.
M50 Day: The M50 is now the world’s slowest stretch of motorway. We should celebrate the political lethargy and planning corruption that brought this prize to Irish shores. Many commuters spend more time on the M50 than they do with their families. Formal recognition of this relationship is long overdue.
Brown Envelope Day: BE Day would be a solemn occasion, when lone pipers would play as politicians atoned publicly for the sins of their predecessors and the rest of us nodded sombrely, quietly wondering how so many of us were ripped off for so long by so few.
Independence Day: Most countries have an Independence Day, so why not us? Ours could be a happy celebration to mark the founding of Ryanair in 1985, a defining event in our history as a nation, when we threw off the shackles of state monopoly and were liberated from having to save up the price of a small car in order to buy a ticket to Heathrow. Finally, we could be truly independent.
