O’DEA CALL TO HELP RURAL PUBS
VETERAN Fianna Fáil TD Willie O’Dea has called for the creation of a special support package to help the country’s crisis-hit rural wet pubs.
Tourism Minister Catherine Martin recently announced a €17m scheme to help restaurants and gastropubs to develop outdoor dining facilities for when the Covid restrictions are lifted.
But Mr O’Dea and a growing number of TDs and senators now want a similar scheme to help smaller traditional pubs that don’t have the capacity to serve food. He has asked Ms Martin to consider a revamped ‘restart grant’ for traditional pubs.
Mr O’Dea told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘The traditional pub, especially in rural Ireland, is now as endangered as the corncrake. Traditional pubs have made the biggest sacrifice of all industries: they have been shut for 400 days and they now need a significant cash transfusion. They can’t just reopen their doors – they will need to be freshened up. I have great confidence in the capacity of Minister Martin to deliver.’
Mr O’Dea’s call was supported by his party colleague, Clare-based senator Timmy Dooley, who said: ‘The small pub is the last refuge of the local character: they have been left stateless by the closure. The thing they most long for is to have a chat about things like corrugated tin rooves and dry cattle.’
Fine Gael TD John Paul Phelan said the Government ‘must deliver on issues like this to retain the confidence of the people’.
The Carlow-Kilkenny TD told the MoS: ‘It would be astonishing if, having exported the Irish pub over the world, it would end up dying in the country that spawned it.’
In response to queries, Minister Martin said further supports will be considered to support sectors that have been ‘disproportionately affected by the pandemic’ as part of the National Recovery Plan.
Ms Martin said this will include ‘more targeted measures’ to help reboot those sectors facing particular challenges during the economic recovery phase.