How to make the most from your annual leave and get away for longer? 

Full-time employees are entitled to a minimum of 20 days annual leave and there are also 10 bank holidays. 

On The Pat Kenny Show, travel expert Pól Ó Conghaile said there are ways you can stretch that to enjoy more time off. 

“Simply book the Friday before,” he said. 

“St Brigid’s is the next one; simply book the Friday before and then you have four-days off in a row. 

“You can extrapolate that if you book the Thursday and the Friday, then you’ll have five-days in a row for the price of two-days annual leave. 

“Then you can go even bigger if you look at St Patrick’s Day or Easter.”

People queueing at the airport. Picture by: Collins Photos.

For parents, this can be particularly handy as the October bank holiday coincides with the school holidays. 

“If you take the four-days annual leave in the October midterm then you actually get nine-days off in a row,” Mr Ó Conghaile said. 

“It sounds crazy to be thinking about the October bank holiday now but, believe you me, prices will be better now than they will be in September.”

Another suggestion Mr Ó Conghaile made was to start booking any trips away early - given very few other people will be booking holidays on the beach in January. 

This year, Easter Sunday falls on April 20th and many airlines will already have their summer schedules “up and running”. 

“Typically, there is less demand at the start and end of those summer schedules,” Mr Ó Conghaile said. 

“They run from roughly the beginning of April to the end of October.”

An Aer Lingus plane on the ground at Dublin airport.

Summertime schedules means more choice but, if you can, consider travelling during the other three seasons. 

“We say in travel, if you have flexibility around your dates and around your destination, that’s kind of a superpower,” Mr Ó Conghaile said. 

“If you go to the travel companies’ websites, the airlines’ websites and go, ‘I’d just like to get away at some stage, guide me by price’ - that’s when you really find the deals.

“Whereas if I say, ‘I’m absolutely stitched into these two weeks in July when everyone else is going away and we really want to go to Spain’, that’s when you start getting into price trouble.” 

In the Programme for Government, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have promised to list Dublin Airport passenger cap that currently bans its from exceeding 32 million flights a year.

Main image: La Barceloneta beach in Barcelona. Picture by: Jordi Boixareu/Alamy Live News