Sir, – I write as a small (and now irate) business owner based in Galway, replying to the suggestion from your reader (Letters, March 28th) that we should consider introducing the same system as Italy: when bank holidays fall on a Tuesday or Thursday, the preceding Monday or succeeding Friday automatically become bank holidays too.
Who, may I ask, is paying the wages and associated staff and business costs in SMEs in this case? The State? Or the SME?
No one in my opinion deserves a bank holiday more than our amazing staff who work in our privately run and privately funded SMEs but when the Government decides to have a new bank holiday, add pension payments, increase sick pay, increase minimum wage, etc, we the SMEs have to come up with the money to pay for this.
All well and good if you are a State employee – no one needs to care where the money comes from, the State will provide. For SMEs this is putting additional back-breaking financial strain on businesses who can ill afford to pay more out of dwindling cash reserves.
READ MORE
I invite you to reread previous interviews and articles The Irish Times has done with small business owners on the pressures they face to meet rising costs. If you want new bank holidays let’s have them – but fully funded and paid for by the taxpayer for all SME employees also. Do the maths, like all SMEs do, before making suggestions please. – Yours, etc,
Patrick Creed,
Athenry,
Co Galway.
