John Paul Phelan, Fine Gael TD for Carlow-Kilkenny
Question: What is the difference between having a drink in a hotel bar and your local pub?
Answer: The taste of the pint? Maybe. There’s certainly nothing like a pint in your local. The potential for Covid-19 spreading between customers? Hardly, when both premises are adhering to strict public health guidelines by operating regularly sanitised, controlled environments, maintaining a set distance between tables and limiting the number of customers to a table.
And yet, from 2nd June, you can enjoy a creamy pint in the warm and cosy comfort of a hotel bar (provided you are a guest) whereas, from 7th June, you may still enjoy said pint, but sitting outside your local pub – provided they have an outdoor space - and hoping the rain holds off until closing time.
As we approach potentially the most important summer season the Irish tourism and hospitality sector has ever known, the decision to reopen hotel bars but not regular pubs on 2nd June, and to reopen restaurants and bars on 7th June for outdoor hospitality only, while hotel restaurants can seat customers inside, simply defies logic.
Reopening outdoor dining areas on bright, sunny days is all very well but what happens when a grey cloud appears and the Heavens open, as is typical of an Irish summers’ days? Are families meant to head home halfway through their meal? Take their plate back to the car? Or attempt to cram inside doorways of venues while they wait it out, meanwhile looking in the window at empty tables inside the restaurant? How does that make sense? What is being created here is a situation where a sector that is already on its knees will see its till receipts wholly dependent on the weather forecast until, at the very least, early July, when it’s hoped that indoor hospitality will return.
Then there’s the added disparity that every venue is different – whilst some might have space to accommodate 20 tables outside their premises, others have zero room to seat people outside. Initiatives like the Fáilte Ireland grants scheme to increase outdoor dining capacity – which I expect to be extended to ‘traditional pubs’ also – are all well and good, but what about pubs and restaurants that have no room to seat their customers outside? They’re ruled out of having any kind of trade for the month of June, at least.
Hospitality owners, staff and customers are all keen to get back to a bit of normality. They’re encouraged by the roll-out of the vaccine. Every hotel in the country seems to be booked up with ‘staycationers’ and yet our pubs remain empty. We’ve had a lot of talk about the country being at war with Covid-19 over the past year. Well now we are at war to save decimated sectors of our economy. And we need to give them a fighting chance of survival by levelling the playing field.
