No Logic in Closing Wet Pubs in Counties with a 14 Day Covid Rate of less than 50 per 100,000.
Aontú Leader & Meath West TD Peadar Tóibín has critiqued the government’s continued abandonment of rural pubs, and the return of arbitrary regulations of the pub trade which has already been through so much this year.
An Teachta Tóibín:
“Rural Pubs were waiting in anticipation for the government announcement regarding restrictions for the coming Christmas season. This is a year, where their income has been devastated and the government curbing that income have done radical financial damage to so many small pubs”.
“Wet Pubs are precluded from opening, and now pubs must have a chef on site to open. We have returned to the pseudo-science whereby a sandwich or a pizza determines whether you get Covid in a pub or not. It is a farce, and is another blinkered policy which fails to even consider the needs of rural communities and businesses.”
“These pubs are lifelines to often isolated communities, and often allow for communities to check up on people. These pubs can be the sole social outlet for some people in a week, not to mention the jobs and investment these pubs bring into the local economy. Counties such as Leitrim, Wexford, Galway, Kerry and Westmeath have 14 day Covid Rates of less than 50 cases per 100,000. That’s a very low rate of Covid and it is a great achievement for these counties. Not long ago the government were operating a county or regional approach. That has been binned and no its one size fits all. This is to the great cost of most of rural Ireland”.
