Pubs’ reopening smells of a messy compromise

ALTHOUGH the owner of my local hostelry might prefer a swift return to normal times, the truth is that his streamlined current operation would pass muster with even the venerable Professor Sam McConkey and the biggest fusspots on NPHET. As the law dictates, the gastro part of his trade is in its zenith, rather than the pub. Sedate diners have replaced dedicated pint-swillers on the high stools while the long gleaming bar, for once bereft of the huddled masses, looks about as forlorn as a mortuary slab waiting for the next delivery of human cargo.

As I passed the suburban gastropub on a damp afternoon, two middle-aged ladies stood outside discussing their threecourse lunch. Everything top class, except for the starter. A bit of respite on a rainy day.

And a contrast to the carnival in Dame Lane, Dublin, last weekend, where revellers spilled out on to the streets, ignoring social distancing, masks and public safety restrictions.

According to a witness on Ivan Yates’s radio show, a DJ played music as the party people let down their hair over takeaway drinks purchased from nearby boozers and off-licences.

It’s still too soon to rule out the possibility that the biggest hangover from the event is not another cluster of the dreaded Covid. Yes, it was reckless behaviour and no-one, from the authorities to passers-by, pretended that the raucous scene may not represent one giant petri dish of the highly contagious virus, the catalyst to a second outbreak.

THE gardaí checked more than 6,000 pubs for flouting restrictions and threatening the health of the nation, not to mention that of the under-25s who, far from their presumed invincibility, are now firmly between Covid’s crosshairs with, according to Dr Ronan Glynn, ‘firm evidence’ that large groups of young people are leading to clusters.

But, seriously, is anyone really surprised that on the first weekend of the pubs reopening, some young people behaved like well, foolish young people rather than middleaged suburbanites whose idea of a treat is a plate of steak and chips?

We are a proud nation of drinkers (alcoholics maybe), and despite all manner of awareness campaigns, we still cling to the notion of booze as a form of reward and a binge as the icing on the cake.

You don’t have to be Johnny Depp to know that alcohol removes inhibitions and that through our beer goggles, judgement is impaired, and not just when it comes to the opposite sex. NPHET took our love affair with alcohol on board as it planned how to open pubs. What else would explain their coming up with 22 pages of byzantine rules, including the genius idea that if we were going to have a drink, we’d also have to damn well eat as well?

Clarity has marked every stage of the battle against the pandemic; indeed it has been the mainstay of the high compliance rates as everyone knew where they stood.

But the reopening of pubs has been the exception. The insistence, for example that pub-goers eat a ‘substantial’ €9 worth of food is counterproductive as, psychologically, it gives drinkers licence to do as they please, once they have fulfilled their part of the bargain.

For the sake of a few weeks’ trading before the entire sector opens up, pubs had to turn into quasi restaurants, but many businesses just found ways around it.

Some pubs took orders for the local Chinese and handed them out at tables.

Others allowed customers to bring the food home as takeaway even though the point of the regulation is that they eat it on the spot.

As we saw from last weekend’s fiasco, the fact that many pubs are still closed, caused crowds to congregate in the areas where there is an abundance of open houses.

THE phased opening of pubs has not been a success. It smacks less of a co-ordinated plan than of a messy compromise between the vintners who want to save their industry, medical experts who want to save us from ourselves and the national mood for more freedom and fun.

If, God forbid, we are ever in this pickle again, there should be no half measures for pubs.

Close them or open them, whatever is best, but with only one rule for all.