Pubs and restaurants are set to welcome punters back indoors before the end of next week.
And this will see in the region of 180,000 hospitality workers get back to full-time employment, many for the first time in nearly 16 months.
But nightclubs will have to wait “some time” according to Tánaiste and Minister for Business, Leo Varadkar, on Monday night.
Two million EU Digital Covid Certs have started winging their way to vaccinated people either by email or post this week and they will be the first allowed back in the doors of pubs as the pass will now be used for the hospitality sector too.
An exemption has also been granted for unvaccinated staff - mainly young people - working in hospitality who will now be allowed to stay back for a pint or bite to eat after work.
But there will be a system of checks because Mr Varadkar said he “feared a repeat of Berlin D2” if voluntary compliance was allowed.
This infamous occasion saw a raucous and blatant disregard for public health advice with a ‘boozy brunch’ hosted by the Dublin city bar last August.
Cabinet ministers paved the way last night for the grand reopening when they approved legislation that will allow for indoor hospitality for people vaccinated or recovered from Covid.
A briefing for members of the Oireachtas health committee has been arranged for Tuesday morning where they will be asked to waive the pre-legislative scrutiny phase.
It will then be a matter of procedure for the Dáil and Seanad to pass the legislation and for the President to sign it into law.
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The President must consider legislation for at least five days and then sign it into law at the end of the fifth day, or on the sixth or seventh days.
Government and industry sources told the Irish Mirror that it is “widely expected” that this day will be either Thursday, July 22, or Friday, July 23.
Mr Varadkar said that it would be “no later” than Monday, July 26 for saloons to swing their doors back open.
The move was welcomed last night by Adrian Cummins, chief executive of the Restaurants Association of Ireland.
He told the Irish Mirror: “It’s a monumental day, or a giant leap, towards getting our industry back open.
“And it’s important that when we get open, we stay open.
“Obviously there’s a lot of guidelines to be developed over the next number of days.
“Then once we get those guidelines we need an information campaign and a communications campaign to our industry, to both our consumers and businesses.”
Mr Varadkar said that despite his fears of a repeat of Berlin D2, he said that gardaí will not be going up to drinkers in pubs and asking for their passes.
He said: “What we’re working on here, and what we’ve worked on with the industry, is on a system of compliance that will not require a huge level of enforcement.
“We see underage drinking enforced by an ID system, the smoking ban, very few inspections or closure orders have to be made.”
Minister for Tourism, Catherine Martin, conceded there is the potential for forgeries, but she said it could be “September or October” for hospitality if we wanted “everything to be perfect.”
