People will travel to the UK to visit pubs and eateries if hospitality does not open in Ireland by early summer, a restaurant owner has said.
John Paul Murphy, 48, owner of Times Square Burger in Kenmare, Co Kerry, said that if bars and restaurants remained closed in Ireland people would “jump on planes” to go to the UK.
England is planning to reopen outdoor dining from Monday, and indoor dining from May 17. The dates are later for Scotland and Wales. No date has been given for the reopening of pubs and restaurants in Northern Ireland or the Republic, but it is not expected to be until mid-summer at the earliest.
Murphy said: “In May bars and restaurants in the UK will be open for indoor dining and they will be allowing groups of up to 30 people outside in beer gardens, so that means the likes of stag nights, hen nights and engagement parties.
“Irish people who are fed up with being locked down are going to jump on planes and go to the UK for a weekend piss up and they will possibly catch Covid-19 and bring it home. There will be an exponential surge in numbers again and then we are going to be forced to lockdown for months on end again.”
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Return flights from Dublin to London are being sold for as little as €20 in April and May. Murphy said that this is a “huge encouragement” for people to break the guidelines.
The government advises against all non-essential travel out of Ireland at present. Irish residents who travel to the UK are not required to self-isolate upon arrival because of the common travel area. When returning home to Ireland residents are required to have a negative Covid-19 test and self-isolate in their own home for 14 days, or for five days if they receive a second negative test result.
Murphy said: “I don’t think people will quarantine at home, I think they will go out and continue on with their lives and they will tell all their mates about the fantastic weekend they had away in London.”
He called for the government to allow pubs and restaurants in Ireland to reopen at the same time as those in the UK to encourage people to stay in the country and prevent another surge in infection.
“I would love to see Ireland open up exactly the same timeline as the UK. Enough is enough now,” he said.
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“I think if the Irish people were actually shown trust and told, ‘We are leaving you, go with this now because the vaccine rollout is pressing ahead,’ then people would stay in Ireland.”
Murphy also said that reopening the hospitality industry in line with the UK was essential to ensure that businesses survive.
“I spoke with a restaurant owner on Sunday, and he told me that if he can’t get a good three to four months trade this summer, he will be closing his doors in October because there will be no reason for him to stay afloat any longer, that is the pressure people are under,” he said.
A spokesman for the Department of Health said: “Ireland’s epidemiological situation remains precarious, and the level of infection remains high. The approach in the coming weeks must therefore continue to be one of extreme caution.”
Adrian Cummins, chief executive of the Restaurants Association of Ireland, said: “I don’t think public health would allow indoor dining immediately and I don’t think the public would want it. They want to know that the over-70s and the high-risk people have been vaccinated, and we have non-essential retail open, and then people know we are ready to move on to the next phase.”
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Cummins said that the government should allow independent restaurants to reopen in line with the planned reopening of hotels and guest houses in June.
“Where is the scientific evidence and the data that keeps independent restaurants closed and allows hotel restaurants to reopen in June?” he asked.“If the government allows staycations within guest houses and hotels obviously people will check into hotels to get access to having a meal and possibly a drink with the meal so where does that leave the independent restaurant or coffee shop that will still have its doors closed in the month of June? That to me is the big issue.”
Cummins also called for outdoor dining to resume as soon as possible after data from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre showed that only 0.1 per cent of Covid-19 cases in Ireland since the start of the pandemic had been traced to outdoor transmission.
