MONAGHAN CALLS TIME ON CLOSURES
PUBLICANS in Monaghan whose businesses have been shut since March are intending to open this week, the Irish Mail on Sunday has learned.
Noel McNally, owner of McNally’s bar in Carrickmacross, says his pub will reopen after a six-month shutdown and ‘four or five other pubs’ will join him.
The pubs will serve food from local takeaways, including Supermac’s.
Some will open tomorrow and some will wait until later in the week to avoid clashing with Leaving Certificate results night tomorrow.
‘We just want to reopen our doors and serve our customers again. Actually, I don’t look on them as customers, I look on them as family,’ said Mr McNally.
‘The same people, a lot of elderly people who come down to have a chat and a pint or watch the match, they miss the pub an awful lot.
‘Every time I meet one in town, they ask, “when are you going to open?”
Well now I can say this week.’
Mr McNally was part of a group of Monaghan publicans who brought a billboard campaign to Dáil Éireann on Thursday asking for pubs to reopen.
The group managed to secure an impromptu meeting with Taoiseach Micheál Martin.
‘Look, sure the politicians we met said the whole food thing is a joke, they know it is but we’ll go along with it for as long as we have to.’
Mr McNally told the Taoiseach that his way of life was taken from him when his pub was closed in March.
He asked: ‘If the Government can reopen schools and off-licences, then why can’t they reopen pubs?’
‘The Government seems willing to trust everyone else in the country, except for pub owners and their customers,’ he said.