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Pub closures will cost Ireland more than its lost pints

Ireland's pub closed two days before St Patrick's Day - shutterstock
Ireland's pub closed two days before St Patrick's Day - shutterstock

It’s been five months since a punter has walked through the doors of an Irish pub. Five months of shutters pulled tight, tills gathering dust and nonsense going un-uttered.

After months of silence, the pubs across Ireland were gearing up to open their doors on August 10, next week. But on Tuesday it was announced that the grand reopening would be pushed back yet again, this time until at least August 31.

To say that the news was met with outrage would probably be understating it.

There’s something a little trite about saying the Irish pub is at the heart of every community. But it’s true. A pub is far more than just a place to sink a few pints – for many, particularly in the countryside, it may well be all you have (unless you want to hang out in the post office). The rural pub is a vital social lifeline.

For years, I lived in a tiny village in the west of Ireland, where the same line of auld fellas would prop up the bar as soon as it opened each afternoon, just to have someone to talk to. There was simply nowhere else to go. The thought of those people with nowhere to turn, particularly after five months of solitude, is heartbreaking.

And that’s not taking into account the publicans, who have lost a colossal amount of money since they closed on March 15, just two days before Paddy’s Day. They will be closed for at least half a year. And yet, no support package has been offered.

The news also comes at a point where we, as a country, are getting pretty sick of our ever-confusing path out of lockdown. At the start, we were fairly smug at how it was handled – Ireland went into lockdown swiftly, and we had a good handle on the crisis from the get go. We did as we were told. We stayed inside. We supported our government, even when our then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was quoting The Terminator and Mean Girls during his televised addresses to the nation.

But right now, it’s hard to keep track of what we can or cannot do. We can, technically, go to a pub – provided the pub in question serves food, we eat a “substantial meal” that costs at least €9 (£8.10), and only stay for 105 minutes. And that’s without going into the complicated distancing rules that change according to whether or not you pre-book a table (they veer so closely to a GCSE maths question that I can never quite decipher them).

So that’s something, right? You can have a pint or three, so long as you order a hefty portion of flaccid chicken wings and don’t outstay your welcome. The only problem? A huge number of pubs in Ireland don’t serve food at all.

At the end of my road, there’s a gorgeous, rickety old boozer that will make you a ham and cheese toastie (if you manage to charm the cantankerous landlord). But according to these rules, that’s not enough. If they wanted to serve anything more substantial they’d have to build an extension, because there’s barely enough room in there to squeeze yourself into the toilet cubicles, let alone whip up a stew.

I get it, of course. The virus hasn’t gone anywhere, and the numbers here are sneaking back up. But those numbers have increased while the pubs were closed. That’s thanks in no small part to the house parties that have replaced pub culture over the last couple of months.

Last week, it felt like half of Dublin descended on the house next door to mine for a gathering that would put Burning Man to shame. The music throbbed through the walls from 2pm until 9am the following morning, and a never-ending stream of people spilled through the front door like clowns from a Mini.

The longer the pubs are closed, the longer parties like this will keep happening. I’m lucky – in my heart of hearts, I’m an old lady who loves nothing more than a 10pm bed time. But if I were a social butterfly, I’d no doubt be drawn to the parties that are raging across the city (I draw the line at the rumoured illegal raves, but I’m not cool enough to be invited to those anyway).

What makes it harder is watching bars and pubs open up in other countries, seemingly without consequence. Seeing friends in London reconnect over icy cold G&Ts or sinking pints in the pub gardens of the Cotswolds has been particularly painful.

The longer our beloved pubs stay closed, the higher the chances that an increasing number of them will never open their doors again. This ruling is a death knell for an industry that’s integral to the social fabric of this country – and one that is already on its knees.