One Welsh council has made St David's Day a bank holiday for its workers.
Gwynedd council's cabinet met on Tuesday January 18 to agree plans to make March 1 a bank holiday for council workers.
The meeting comes after the UK government refused to devolve power to allow Wales to create its own holidays, as in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
St Andrew's Day is a bank holiday In Scotland and St Patrick's Day is a bank holiday in Northern Ireland.
In December the UK Government rejected calls for a St David’s Day Bank Holiday after claiming too many people commute across the Welsh and English border to make the idea feasible.
The item before Gwynedd Council next week suggests that “St David’s Day 2022 is designated as an additional holiday day for Council staff working on the terms of employment of local government employees, for celebrating our patron saint’s day to be funded in accordance with paragraph 2.10 of the report b”.
It also suggests that the council “authorise officers to investigate possible options to make such an arrangement permanent and to that end further discussions with the recognised trade unions and continue to lobby for Westminster Government support for devolution to the Welsh Government empowered them to establish bank holidays for Wales”.
The report notes that it “would cost around £200,000 every year to the Council (around £100,000 to execute the last option which is half a day of holiday and redesignating the other half day of holidays which are currently allowed)”.
The report says that these costs are mainly to cover the need to employ part-time staff to ensure that the service continues in the absence of full-time staff.
In October of last year, Gwynedd Council sent a letter to ministers calling for an end to the “embarrassing” anomaly of the Scottish and Northern Irish Governments being able to designate their national days while no such powers are currently devolved to Cardiff Bay.
But in a letter Paul Scully MP, the minister for Small Business, dismissed the idea of an additional Bank Holiday for Wales.
Writing in response to the council’s request, Mr Scully noted, “While we appreciate that the people of Wales want to celebrate their patron saint, more people work across the English/Welsh border than across the English/Scottish border.
“This closer degree of integration could cause greater business disruption. If we had separate bank holidays in England and Wales, the impact on both employees and businesses is difficult to predict.”
In the proposal before Gwynedd Council next week, this response is described as “hugely disappointing”.
St Andrew's Day is a bank holiday In Scotland and St Patrick's Day is a bank holiday in Northern Ireland.
One option being considered as part of the plans include making an extra holiday for staff in 2022 by changing their annual leave entitlement.
The council said trade unions had been consulted about the proposals for staff, but teachers employed by the council would not be able to take an extra holiday through a local agreement alone.
Speaking to BBC Radio Wales on Tuesday January 18 about the proposals, Dafydd Meurig deputy leader of Gwynedd council said: “It's partly symbolic but also partly wanting to celebrate our patron saint and our welshness and our nationhood.
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"The UK seems quite liberal with its jubilee holidays, handing them out like sweets, but for some reason we are not allowed to celebrate our own identity.”
In discussing how he thinks the day should be celebrated in Wales, he said the country should make more of the occasion.
"Why should we just have it as a day, why should we not have a week of celebrations. On Christmas we don't hold Christmas concerts on the day we do, we hold them on the week leading up to the holiday so I think we should have a bigger celebration. Maybe a weekend with one day off either on a friday or a monday.
"I think we need to be making more of it and this is our opportunity in Gwynedd to try it at least this year."
Gwynedd is the first council in Wales to consider making St David’s Day a bank holiday.
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