PUBS IN REVOLT ON TIME LIMITS
Government can’t enforce rules as owners to allow 3-hour sessions of food and drink
PUB owners say they will rebel against the Covid guidelines and break the 105-minute customer time limit when they reopen.
And many others, who fear
they can’t speak on the record, because they are worried about reprisals, say the rules are completely unenforceable.
Ronan Flood, the owner of Oscar’s Café Bar in Smithfield, Dublin city centre, has vowed to allow guests to eat for a maximum of three hours, despite the Government saying they should leave in an hour and 45 minutes.
Mr Flood said expecting people to eat a meal in this time is like ‘an eating and drinking Olympics’ and the time limit is ‘ludicrous’.
And a pub owner in Temple Bar said he won’t be sticking to the
time limit. The publican, who declined to be named, said that customers won’t bother going out if their evening is limited to 105 minutes. He told the Irish Daily Mail: ‘It’s a guideline and that’s how we’re treating it, we’re not going to be sticking to the 105 minutes exactly. My biggest concern is that people are not booking in because of the 105 minutes, end of.’
‘They’re trying to round up the troops and they’re all telling me they’re not going to bother going in if they’re only going in for an hour and 45 minutes. That’s where we’re at. People just don’t want to go out if that’s going to be the case.
‘And going from one place to another, booking in one place, booking into another place or multiple bookings in the same place, it’s just a farce. Treat adults like adults’. He said that pubs have already followed strict HSE guidelines, and that the time limit, in practice, could actually risk spreading the virus even more.
‘Why would you move somebody on after an hour and 45 minutes is beyond me. It doesn’t make sense,’ the publican said, adding: ‘Everybody is saying the same thing. An hour and 45 minutes here, an hour and 45 minutes in another place, and if somebody was carrying it, you’re just spreading it around more and more.’
Meanwhile, Mr Flood said: ‘We’ve made huge efforts over the past two months or so preparing for a reopening; obviously the health and safety of our guests is a number-one priority. It’s just that this is a step too far for us. It makes absolutely no sense. It’s an arbitrary, non-science-based rule… it’s completely unenforceable.’
He told RTÉ’s Liveline that forcing customers to leave after this amount of time would likely lead them to go to another bar or restaurant – possibly spreading Covid-19 even further if they have contracted the virus.
He said: ‘A table of six – in all likelihood, they have not seen each other since before lockdown. What group of six is going to disband and go their separate ways after 105 minutes? We already have a situation where customers are asking us, “Can we make a booking for 6.30pm, go for a walk around the block at 8pm, and come back with a reservation for another member of our party at 8.30pm?” What are we meant to say?’ Mr Flood also fears staff will be faced with a backlash if they have to ask people to leave their table. ‘We’ll already be policing them in the queue in the toilets and now we’re meant to be policing them at the table. You can understand why customers will get aggro with us, kicking them out after 105 minutes,’ he said.
He believes people ‘from two camps’ will be expressing anger, explaining: ‘One, we’re not enforcing social distancing, in their opinion, correctly, and the other is people ripping us to shreds because we’re asking them to remain seated during the meal. I’m dreading reopening on Monday in terms of how the public are going to react.’
Restaurants and pubs which serve food will be reopening from next Monday, and remaining pubs will be allowed to welcome back
‘Gardaí won’t be enforcing rules’
customers from the end of July. Guidelines initially said customers should be given 90 minutes, which was later increased.
One Munster bar owner, who asked not to be named because he fears a confrontation with the Department of Health, said he didn’t think the law will be enforceable. ‘I don’t want to be seen to be criticising it but I don’t think any bar owner is going to be telling people to leave. So who is going to enforce it?
‘The gardaí won’t be, I have been assured of that.
‘They don’t have any plan in place for that and I certainly won’t be telling people to leave if they are enjoying a few drinks on a Saturday,’ he added.
John Gleeson, of Gleeson’s pub in Booterstown, Dublin, said it is irresponsible to not follow the guidelines. However, he added that he will not be throwing customers ‘out on the street’. ‘We will be following the guidelines of an hour and 45 minutes, but they are only guidelines, not the law, so we’re not going to be kicking people out on the street,’ he said.
Liam Hartley, the manager of Jack Meade’s gastropub in Cheekpoint, Co. Waterford, said the rule ‘took all the fun out of it for people’. He said: ‘People want to relax, have a bit to eat, have few drinks, and this rule just isn’t suitable.’
Mr Hartley also said that he would be following the guidelines but that they made his business more difficult.