St Patrick’s Day has been good to Brian Whelahan both in sport and business, but he’s strangely idle today.
Recently, the former Offaly star celebrated 25 years since his pub on Connaught Street in Birr started business, the doors opening just a few weeks before he won the first of his four All-Ireland club hurling titles after beating Dunloy in a replay that year.
From 1995 on, if he wasn’t conducting matters from the Birr half-back line on March 17, it was a day of brisk business in the bar.
But he was one of a number of publicans nationwide that made the decision on Saturday to shut down his premises before the Government stepped in the following day.
“When the decision was taken to close the schools, colleges and creches, it sort of really sharpened my mind,” said Whelahan, “because I would have an element of my customers who would be college students who would be back at weekends and I just felt if we’re taking a decision to close our colleges, does that mean they should be allowed congregate in bars, socialising, having a good time?
“The distancing of a metre apart - like that just doesn’t go on by the very nature of being in bars and being in nightclubs. You just can’t police that.
“I had a party booked in for Saturday night. I had been in touch with the family to see what their views were on it and on Saturday morning I just rang them and told them I was going to cancel the party because I just felt there’s a lot more people affected than just people who are immediately at the party or whatnot.
“Also, my mum has gone through a tough time over the last number of years and I know if she picks up even a bug, a normal cold or anything like that, it knocks her for six and to take a chance of exposing her to the chance of contracting this virus, I wasn’t prepared to do that.”
Naturally, there are implications for Whelahan and his staff though he acknowledges that it’s more acute elsewhere.
“I’m in a situation that I’m there nearly the whole time myself so it’s part-time staff that are really affected with me and I also have family members that work for me so it’s not hitting as hard as with other bigger pubs but the knock-on effect of this is huge.
“Fifty thousand people are going to be affected by this due to employment immediately. So that has a huge effect, not alone on families, but on local communities because circulation of money only goes around - everybody is relying on everyone else.”
And with pubs unlikely to open any time soon, businesses like his need a break from the Government, he says.
“While we are closed, the financial world is still going on and we have to pay the piper at the end of the day and our mortgages and whatnot and that’s something that Government will have to direct people on because it’s very hard to meet those type of repayments when there’s nothing coming in the other end.
“So that would be something we would be hoping would be clarified as well pretty quickly. It’s a smaller issue in the greater scheme of things but it’s something that concerns our business immediately.
“If this goes on longer, like what some people are saying, you’ll find very quickly that hardship is only going to grow on people involved in this sector.”
