Clare publicans excited as permission to trade normally looms

CLARE publicans are getting ready for the expected resumption of normal trading after years of restrictions and rolling lockdowns.

Popular Ennis bar Taylor’s was set to remain closed for the rest of January , but this morning Susan Taylor said those plans have now changed.

“We are going to open next week and we’re just waiting to hear the news about the restrictions.”

The pub does not serve food and the 8pm closing time had meant that opening just wasn’t worthwhile. However the expected resumption of normal trading times in the very near future has changed the outlook.

In Newmarket on Fergus, John Quinlivan, who runs the Honk, is looking forward to normality resuming. “It was very hard, especially in a place like this where we wouldn’t open until the evening anyway. We’d open at five or six o’clock and you’re supposed to close again at 8pm, that’s very difficult.”

He said that January is always a difficult month anyway, but the 8pm closing time meant many people didn’t bother socialising.

“Oh God, yeah, I found that, an awful lot of people weren’t out at all, they didn’t bother with it. That’s the feeling we got after Christmas, that people were just so fed up of it.”

Even with tens of thousands of cases a day another full lockdown didn’t come into place, and there is hope now that the worst of Covid-19 is in the past. However, John remembers such a sentiment in 2020 and 2021. “You’d never take anything for granted again with it, you’d never know what’s around the corner and what could come up.”

In the autumn of 2020 pubs were allowed to reopen, but had to close again within two weeks, and John says such short periods of trading were very hard for some businesses, who spent money on perishable goods.

He feels the last few years have changed the social habits of people, particularly older people. “There are some elderly people I haven’t seen in two years. They didn’t want to come out, they were afraid of getting it, afraid of bringing it home. We won’t know the fall out from this for a while yet.”