The Tipperary based vice president of the Vintners Federation is questioning what pubs have done to deserve being force to remain closed.
Publicans had been expecting to open their doors next Monday as part of the easing of Covid-19 restrictions.
However this has been deferred until at least August 10th.
Richie Gleeson of Gleeson’s in Clonmel says he accepts the need to curtail the possible spread of coronavirus but fears there’s a division coming in the pub trade.
“I absolutely understand public health issues and that we need to proceed with caution but the divide between food pubs and wet pubs as we’re being called now – pubs with just drinks for sale – and how they’ve turned around and split our industry in two.”
“You know we were always very united in our approach to how we addressed all the issues in our trade and now its kind of us versus them and I don’t like it.”
Richie says the decision to allow pubs serving food to reopen while keeping the likes of his closed makes no sense and also misses out on the opportunity to provide greater social distancing.
“Its absolute nonsense – makes no sense whatsoever.”
“I can understand the principle behind it was to try and get people to conform to the notion of restaurant style bookings – coming in, sitting down, spending a short amount of time and leaving again. But what’s to say I can’t do that with just alcohol on offer?”
“It was a bit short sighted – they’ve actually reduced the amount of space available for people to fit into. And there’s a pent up demand for going back to the pub and if we were all open there’d be more space, more social distancing and a more relaxed atmosphere.”
