One of the leading hospitality officials in the country has hit out at the Government ahead of an expected delay to the changing of the rules around indoor dining.
It is widely thought that instead of reopening next Monday, July 5, pubs and restaurants will stay shut for at least two weeks.
There has also been talks that a 'vaccine ticket' where people can prove they are vaccinated could then dine indoors freely.
Adrian Cummins, the Chief Executive Officer of the Restaurants Association of Ireland, told RTÉ's Morning Ireland that this was not a workable prospect.
He said: "Businesses across the country will be devastated with this announcement of a delay of minimum two weeks in order to get them back open.
"The Government now want to press ahead with a system to get vaccinated customers into indoor dining. We think this is problematic, it's discriminatory and we don't think it's workable.
"Look at other jurisdictions - it hasn't been workable in Denmark or Israel - and it raises a number of legal questions under the Equal Status Act. So we need to get a number of answers today from Government."
Any pubs that would reopen for this vaccine ticket would need to have their staff fast-tracked to vaccination.
Mr Cummins also registered his confusion as to why pubs and restaurants would have to stay closed while hotels were able to have indoor dining.
He said: "Indoor dining is open across Europe - we're now an outlier, that is a fact and the death rates have not risen, hospitalisations have not risen with the Delta variant. We need to look at the EU data, not just NPHET's projections.
"This industry now has been knocked back a number of times and now we don't know when we're going to reopen. The summer has been lost for thousands of businesses across the State.
"We have hotels across the country and businesses across the country where you don't need a 'vaccine ticket' to get in, where staff are unvaccinated and there's no Delta variant. So we're extremely confused, we're extremely angry and we want an immediate meeting with the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste today to discuss this.
"You can cross the border to get to full hospitality, all businesses are open. But here, we are penalising business owners and there's no end in sight for our industry"
