Thumbsupfornew pubopeninghours

July 2000

Wexford woke up with a collective hangover on Monday, but the thumbs up was still given to the new pub opening hours.

The newly extended hours, which allow punters to imbibe until 12.30 a.m. (with a drinking up time of 1 a.m.) on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights were generally welcomed by both punters and publicans.

In fact, some now say that the laws don’t go far enough, and Sunday should not have been left out of the new extension times, even though the Minister disposed of the traditional “holy hour” on Sunday afternoons.

Johnny Gaynor, Chairman of the Wexford Vintners Branch, feels the newly-extended hours are ‘exactly what we wanted…but Sunday put a dampener on it.’

He believes that the 1 a.m. closing will be a massive plus for punters, who until now have been forced to pay into nightclubs if they wanted to get a drink after 11.30 p.m.

The laws, he said, will also benefit people who will no longer have to hire rooms and get extensions in hotels to hold parties.

‘It’s early days, and it impossible to say if these hours will increase business, but I believe the changes are for the better,’ he said.

Nite club owner, Oliver Roche, who is involved with both The Junction and Archers, also welcomed the new laws, but said it is unclear if they will go to court for exemptions to keep the niteclub open until 3 a.m.

‘We are going to wait and see what happens. Three o’clock is very late, and perhaps people will have had enough in the pubs. There will always be a percentage of people who will go to the nite clubs mainly to dance, but how long can they dance for,’ he said.

Johnny Barron of The Sky and The Ground, one of the many pubs in Wexford who until now have extended their weekend hours somewhat through their restaurant licences, says the reaction of the public has been positive.

He believes that over the next five years, the new licensing laws will be totally revolutionised, with publicans themselves deciding their opening times.

‘If we can gain some ground every year we will eventually become like our European counterparts. We are still way behind Europe, where in many countries, establishments have the option of serving into the early hours every night of the week,’ he said.

The fact that the early part of the week is still 11.30 p.m. closing, and that Sunday night is 11 p.m., is confusing to tourists, he added.

‘I think that the regular customer won’t mind that, because they have to get up for work in the morning. But we are a tourist-oriented country. There could be right session going on in the early part of the week, and we couldn’t serve a tourist a drink,’ he said.

He added however that overall, the reaction has been ‘ bascially positive’. ‘ The customers like it,’ he said.