Have a pint at reopened pool... but not a swim!
POPULAR, over more than a century, for offering good clean fun and a great cure for stress, the Clontarf Seawater Baths are to reopen next week, but the ‘cure’ available to most punters will be the hair of the dog.
After a €2.4million refurbishment, the 132-year-old baths boast a café, a restaurant and – after publican David Cullen was yesterday granted a seven-day licence – a bar.
It also has a 25x40-metre pool, but while the public will be able to enjoy a pint, they won’t all be able to swim.
According to the Baths at Clontarf website: ‘Our intention is to open the pool for as many people as possible, but it is expensive to run. Initially, the pool will open to clubs of all varieties who can provide their own insurance and lifeguards.’
The pool allows water from the Irish Sea to enter and be passed through a constant filtration system, with a small amount of chlorine to ensure its cleanliness.
Mr Cullen’s firm, Clontarf Baths and Assembly Rooms Company, said it would like to open the baths up for other users in the future, but did not respond to requests for comment at the time of going to print last night.
The company has leased the complex from Dublin City Council at a rent of €25,000 a year.
Clontarf Baths and Assembly Rooms, as it was known, opened in 1886 and closed 110 years later in 1996.