​Important update on new the Public Holiday on 18 March 2022 and ECCE, NCS, CCSP service calendars

This year (2022) an extra once-off public holiday will take place on Friday, 18 March. From 2023, there will be a new annual public holiday in early February to mark St Brigid’s Day.

The new public holiday for 2022 has now been applied to both NCS and ECCE service calendars on the Early Years Hive.

Please see the important information regarding this public holiday and your service calendars for ECCE, CCSP and NCS below.

ECCE

In order to apply 18 March as a public holiday closure on your 2021 ECCE service calendar, you must first save a draft version of your 2021 ECCE service calendar and then submit it. The steps for doing this are slightly different depending on whether you currently have 18 March marked as a closure day on your calendar or not.

1. Services that have 18 March marked as OPEN on their 2021 ECCE service calendar

If you do not have 18 March marked as a closure and you would like the public holiday applied to your calendar, please save a draft version of your 2021 ECCE service calendar and submit it. There is no other calendar requirement in relation to the bank holiday in this scenario.

Please see the below steps on how to do this. Alternatively, please see a separate guidance document with screenshots HERE.

Go to My Account > Service Calendar on the Early Years Hive

Expand the yellow dropdown arrow on ECCE 2021 calendar

Select ‘Save As Draft’. This will create a second, draft version of your ECCE 2021 calendar (please allow a minute for the draft calendar to load or refresh your page)

Expand the yellow dropdown arrow on the new draft ECCE 2021 calendar and select Edit

The public holiday will be automatically applied to your calendar

Go straight to the bottom of the page and select the Submit button

This will now replace your previous calendar as the active ECCE 2021 service calendar

The ECCE calendar will automatically be reduced from 183 to 182 days and the 38-week/41-week rule remains unchanged.

2. Services that have 18 March marked as CLOSED on their 2021 ECCE service calendar

If you do have 18 March marked as a closure and you would like this changed to a public holiday on your calendar, please save a draft version of your ECCE 2021 service calendar, add a new closure day accordingly in its place (in a future week) and submit it.

Please see the below steps on how to do this. Alternatively, please see a separate guidance document with screenshots HERE.

Go to My Account > Service Calendar on the Early Years Hive

Expand the yellow dropdown arrow on ECCE 2021 calendar

Select ‘Save As Draft’. This will create a second, draft version of your ECCE 2021 calendar (please allow a minute for the draft calendar to load or refresh your page)

Expand the yellow dropdown arrow on the new draft ECCE 2021 calendar

The public holiday will be automatically applied to your calendar

Select an additional closure day on the calendar in lieu of 18 March

Select the Submit button at the bottom of the page

This will now replace your previous calendar as the active ECCE 2021 service calendar

NCS 

The additional public holiday will be automatically added to your NCS calendar on the early Years Hive. There is no action required from service providers for NCS. If you had previously added a closure for this date on your calendar, this will now be removed and any marked as subsidised will be re-counted in 10 allowable subsidised closures days.

CCSP

The additional public holiday is currently in progress and will be communicated again when complete.

Support

If you require further support regarding your service calendars, please raise a Service Request on the Early Years Hive using the following dropdown options:

Request program type: ECCE/CCSP/ NCS

Request type: ECCE Calendar/CCSP Calendar/ NCS Calendar

Request type detail: General