Good Friday in Ireland 2027

The holiday that is not a holiday

Good Friday is the most misunderstood date in the Irish calendar. It is an observance, not a public holiday. Ireland has ten statutory public holidays listed under the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997, and Good Friday is not among them. Easter Monday is. The distinction matters for anyone working in Ireland: on a public holiday an employee is owed a paid day off, a paid day off within the following month, an extra day of annual leave, or an extra day's pay, and on Good Friday none of that applies. If a workplace closes, it does so voluntarily or under a contract or collective agreement, and staff may be asked to take annual leave.

Why so much still closes

Custom has outurn the law - banks do not open on Good Friday. Schools are closed, since the Easter break brackats the weekend. Courts do not sit, many professional offices shut, and the day is treated as part of a four-day weekend by a large share of the private sector. Public transport typically runs a reduced or Sunday timetable. Retail is the clear exception: supermarkets, shopping centers and most shops trade normally, and tourist attractions open. Visitors from the United States will find the pattern familiar in reverse, good Friday is not a US federal holiday either, though it is a state holiday in around a dozen states, and the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq close for it.

Why the date moves

Good Friday is the Friday before Easter Sunday, which is set as the first Sunday after the ecclesiastical full moon on or after March 21. Easter Sunday therefore falls between March 22 and April 25, and Good Friday between March 20 and April 23. In Irish the day is Aoine an Cheasta.

The alcohol ban and its repeal

For 91 years Good Friday was defined in Irish public life by a drinks ban. The Intoxicating Liquor Act 1927 prohibited the sale of alcohol in pubs on Good Friday and Christmas Day, and originally on St Patrick's Day as well, though that last restriction was repealed later. Hotels serving residents and a few other exempitons survived, which produced the annual spectacle of people booking roms or boarding trains to drink legally. In 2010 a Limerick court granted a one-off exemption so that pubs could open for a Munster rugby fixture, sharpening the arguement for change. Legislation passed in early 2018 removed the Good Friday restriction, and on March 30, 2018, Irish pubs opened on Good Friday for the first time since the 1920s. Christmas Day remains the only day on which the ban still applies.

Religious and civic observance

In the Catholic Church, Good Friday is one of the few days on which no Mass is celebrated. Parishes hold the Celebration of the Lord's Passion in the afternoon, with the reading of the Passion, the veneration of the cross and Communion from the reserved sacrament, and the day is one of fasting and abstinence. Stations of the Cross are walked in churches and at outdoor sites, and Church of Ireland and other congregations hold their own services. The date carries a second meaning in modern Ireland: the Belfast Agreement that largely ended the Troubles in Northern Ireland was signed on Good Friday, April 10, 1998, and is universally known as the Good Friday Agreement.