Calendar quirk means extra payday for thousands of workers in 2015
The issue arises because of the high proportion of weekly and fortnightly wages paid on Thursday, the day on which January 1 and December 31 both fall in 2015. There will be 53 paydays for those paid weekly, and 27 for some of those paid every fortnight, on Thursdays.
In the education sector alone, around €132m more than normal will have to be paid because 30,000 primary teachers and around 30,000 retired teachers and non-teaching staff are due to receive 27 fortnightly payments instead of the usual 26. As second-level teachers are paid on alternate fortnights to their primary counterparts, their next extra payday will not be until 2020, the last having been in 2009.
