March is here, and with that comes Saint David’s Day.

We celebrate the legacy of Saint David, the distinctive Welsh identity and culture, and what that means to us. We remind ourselves to do the little things in life. Minor but impactful things that make life better for everyone. It is Wales’ de facto National Day.

With that message, we also come to an inevitable annual discussion of whether 1 March should be marked with a public holiday.

It absolutely should be.

Scotland does not have Easter Monday as a bank holiday, instead celebrating Saint Andrew’s Day on 30 November, as well as an additional New Year bank holiday on 2 January, for a total of nine per year.

Northern Ireland has ten bank holidays per year, marking Saint Patrick’s Day and ‘Orangeman’s Day’ in addition to those marked in the ‘England & Wales’ jurisdiction.

This leaves us in Wales with eight bank holidays per year, less than the other devolved administrations, and completely aligned with England.

Under the Wales Act 2006, bank holidays are specifically reserved to Westminster, despite them having been devolved to Scotland in 1998. It isn’t reserved by virtue of falling under a particular legal category (or ‘heads’ as the Acts call them); it is in the ‘Miscellaneous’ section.

This is just one many examples of Wales’ weaker devolution settlement than Scotland and Northern Ireland. I like to call it ‘devolution lite’.

One would hope and expect that now the UK is under the control of Labour (‘the Party of Devolution’), that something might now change, but it hasn’t, and on current trends, it won’t.

This is despite every single party in the Senedd supporting making it a bank holiday, including Labour and the Conservatives, and even Reform UK, overwhelming public support in polls, and petitions signed by tens of thousands of people, successive UK governments have point-blank refused it.

England and Wales’ eight bank holidays is the lowest in Europe. France has 11, Germany 10-13 depending on state, and Spain has 12. Most European countries are in the range of 12 to 14. Whilst it is true that bank holidays do carry economic risks, we are largely shielded from this by a lack of bank holidays in the first place. We can afford it.

In 2017, then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn proposed having the feast days of St. David, St. George, St. Andrew and St Patrick as bank holidays. Whilst this would bring us in line with most of Europe, I wouldn’t support this. With all due respect to the people of the other nations, their Saints’ days carry no meaning to most Welsh people, and likewise Saint David’s Day probably doesn’t mean much to them.

And that’s fine. We are different nations, after all!

The designation of public holidays should be devolved to Wales, as it is to the other administrations, and the Welsh Government should designate 1 March as a public holiday each year. The UK Government can then do what they feel right in terms of Saint George’s Day in England. Logically it should be, but that’s not for us in Wales to worry about.

I understand the argument that celebrating it in schools provides more of an engaging experience for children, but can’t we have both? National Days are a celebration of the country’s history, language and distinctiveness. Schools should be embracing our culture all year round, no just using Saint David’s Day as a reason. Even if we have a day off for it, there’s no reason the occasion can’t be marked a day or two either side of 1 March!

Some public sector organisations have already adopted Saint David’s Day as a paid holiday for staff. It’s high time that the rest of the country follows suit.