Every public holiday raises the same questions in a staffing office: which temps qualify, what each one is owed, and who pays for it. The rules are the same as for any other employee, but variable hours and short assignments make them harder to apply. This is a plain breakdown for Irish agencies.
The ten public holidays
Ireland has ten public holidays a year: New Year's Day, St Brigid's Day (the first Monday in February, or 1 February when it falls on a Friday), St Patrick's Day, Easter Monday, the first Mondays in May, June and August, the last Monday in October, Christmas Day and St Stephen's Day. Good Friday is not a public holiday.
Who qualifies
Entitlement comes from the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997, and it applies to agency and temp workers in the same way as to direct employees.
- Full-time workers qualify immediately, even if they started the week before.
- Part-time workers qualify once they have worked at least 40 hours in the five weeks ending on the day before the public holiday.
- Workers who have just finished still qualify if they leave during the week ending on the day before the public holiday and worked during the four weeks before that week.
For an agency, the 40-hour test is the hard part. It has to be checked for every part-time worker, for every public holiday, using their actual hours across the previous five weeks.
What a qualifying worker is owed
The employer chooses one of four benefits: a paid day off on the day, a paid day off within a month, an additional day of annual leave, or an additional day's pay. In temp work it is almost always pay. The amount depends on the worker's pattern:
- Works on the public holiday: paid for the hours worked at the agreed rate, plus the benefit. An additional day's pay is based on the normal daily hours last worked before the public holiday.
- Would normally work that day but the site is closed: a normal day's pay.
- Does not normally work that day: one-fifth of their normal weekly wage.
Where a worker's hours or pay vary from week to week, the daily or weekly figure is worked out as an average over the 13 weeks before the public holiday.
Double time is not in the Act. The law gives the agreed pay for hours worked plus the public holiday benefit. An enhanced rate such as double time comes from the contract or the client's terms, so be clear whether it is paid in place of the statutory benefit or in addition to it.
Who pays: the agency or the client?
The agency. Under the Organisation of Working Time Act, the party that pays an agency worker's wages is treated as the employer, so the public holiday entitlement sits with the agency. Whether that cost can be billed on to the client is a commercial question, and it should be written into the terms of business before the first public holiday arrives, not argued about afterwards.
Where agencies get caught
- Missing the one-fifth payment for part-time workers who were not rostered on the day but had worked their 40 hours.
- Applying one rule to every client when each client's agreed public holiday rate is different.
- Paying the benefit but not billing it, or billing it when the terms do not allow it.
- No record of how a figure was reached when a worker queries their payslip weeks later.
Public holiday pay for agency workers — summary
- Ten public holidays a year; Good Friday is not one
- Full-time workers qualify immediately
- Part-time workers need 40 hours in the previous five weeks
- Not rostered that day: one-fifth of the normal weekly wage
- Worked that day: agreed pay for the hours plus the benefit
- The agency, as the party paying wages, is responsible
- Double time is contractual, not statutory
This article is general information, not legal advice. The Workplace Relations Commission publishes the current rules. Related: how overtime works for agency workers.