The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
FORCING pubs and restaurants to close at 5pm would amount to a lockdown, said publican and President of Ennis Chamber Darragh McAllister this afternoon.
“It’s essentially a lockdown without calling it a lockdown. Even pubs that do serve food, no one is open for long before 5pm. I think there’s a game being played here and unfortunately we’re the ball. There’s no way NPHET can imagine the Government would accept that, I think they’re deliberately lowballing, they’d like to see something like 7pm or 8pm,” he said.
Businesses like his own would be essentially shut by a 5pm closing time, he stressed. “It’s a closure. It seems to me a cynical move, because without calling it a closure they’d get away without paying the PUP to the tens of thousands who’d have to be let go, because there’d be no work for them at all before 5pm.”
Owen Ryan
Owen Ryan has been a journalist with the Clare Champion since 2007, having previously worked for a number of other regional titles in Limerick, Galway and Cork.
