Bars and restaurants may not open again after tomorrow; at least until after the Covid-19 restrictions are lifted.
That’s the view for local former Vintners President Pat Crotty.
The owner of Kilkenny City’s Paris Texas bar and restaurant says the government supports agreed for the sector this week has saved local jobs.
But he says many businesses won’t be able to open for reduced hours and some may not find it’s worthwhile to open for the Christmas holidays; “Certainly until the kids go back to school in the middle of January, the 9th of January whatever it is, we will trade the full seven days a week we will have to look at it after that, as will most, there are people closing now, there are people closing on Christmas Eve, people closing on New Year’s Eve, my view is that we will stay open if we can at all”.
He also says there are some pubs that might be able to open up until 8pm for the next few weeks but January especially will be extremely difficult for most; “There are some traditional pubs that would have a day trade and they’re also the pubs that probably don’t have a huge staffing compliment, they would tend to be owner-managed so they can probably actually do a certain amount of business, whether it’ll be enough to pay the insurance and pay all the other bits and pieces that can’t be put in abeyance is another matter but basically everyone has to make their own call”.
And he adds people are being very cautious about going out; “The busiest night should actually have been last Saturday, the Friday and Saturday before Christmas are the two big, big party nights and obviously there were very few parties if any so this week would just be a nice busy week, all week you’d have day time and night time, you’d have a reasonable serve going on and it’s very muted because the messaging has certainly got through, people are being very careful, even the ones who do come into us are being careful, it’s a shadow of its former self but look we’re happy to be open”.
Meanwhile, keep up to date with the restrictions in Ireland by tuning into KCLR and checking here
