Last week, Gwynedd councillors took the unprecedented step in Wales to declare St David’s Day a holiday for their staff.

For years now, there has been a growing push to have March 1 recognised as a national holiday here in Wales. It’s a very reasonable request, one that would put this nation on a footing with Northern Ireland, where March 17 is a public holiday to mark the role of St Patrick, and November 30 in Scotland that commemorates the crucifixion of St Andrew.

But the Welsh appeal has been falling on deaf ears in Westminster.

Maybe Boris and company were too busy trying to figure out the difference between work and a party. Were St David’s Day to be a national day in Wales, there would be little confusion between the two.

Certainly, council staff in Gwynedd will have a well-deserved day of rest, and we can only hope that it won’t be too long before the rest of Wales follows suit. If there is a slight wrinkle in all of this, it is that the taxpayers of Gwynedd will have to pay £200,000 to cover the cost of the new day off.

It’s worth noting too the sentiment expressed by Cllr Nia Jeffreys at the council over Westminster’s refusal to devolve power to Wales on this matter. “It angers me,” she said, that we can’t decide this for ourselves in Wales and it rubs salt in the wound that Westminster is giving us two extra days this year to celebrate the Queen.”

The issue, Cllr Jeffreys is Westminster, and its complete refusal to concede ground to the nation of Wales. Before Christmas, 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.

That’s a strange notion given that Covid has shown just how important and distinct the border is – even if the Government in England declined to strengthen its corona defences, allowing busloads of revellers from Wales to travel there to celebrate the New Year freely and without adequate Covid safety measures and the Omicron threat.

Gwynedd has been leading the way on this issue, asking UK ministers to 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.

It’s a start, a good day’s work nevertheless.