Covid in Ireland: Restaurants keep indoor dining ban to protect workers (2024)

Some hospitality businesses will remain closed for indoor dining from Monday despite being allowed to serve customers who are fully vaccinated or have recovered from Covid-19.

Yesterday Michael D Higgins, the president, signed the Health (Amendment) (No.2) Bill 2021 to allow indoor dining to recommence. New guidelines for the sector will end time limits for eating inside bars and restaurants, and venues must close by 11.30pm.

People eligible to dine indoors must present their digital Covid-19 certificate. An app is being developed by the government for businesses to check validity. Children under the age of 18 can also attend if accompanied by an eligible family member.

However, a growing number of businesses say that they will not reopen for indoor dining next week. The restaurant 31 Lennox, in Dublin, said it would not open indoor dining until all its staff had the opportunity to be fully vaccinated. Darren Costello, the managing director, said that the restaurant opened during the first lockdown and was able to “survive” restrictions over the past 16 months.

“It just seemed to make sense to wait an additional few weeks to give our staff the opportunity to be fully vaccinated,” he said. “I honestly feel policing this is going to be a nightmare for staff so I would rather make the call to postpone indoor dining and see how things go with other venues reopening.”

The Bulman Bar and Toddies Restaurant in Kinsale, Co Cork, also said it would not be opening for indoor dining on Monday. “It looks like very soon we will have the option to open inside to fully vaccinated people,” it said in a post on social media.

“While our hard working and brilliant young workforce remain unvaccinated, we at the Bulman have decided to remain as an outdoor dining and drinks venue until further notice.” It said it was up to their staff whether they wanted to take the vaccine or not. “Certainly [they] won’t get fired for exercising a human right,” it added.

In a recent Tweet, the Skinny Batch Bakery in Lusk, Dublin, said it would not be opening for indoor dining until all its staff could eat there.

Yesterday, Leo Varadkar, the tanaiste, told reporters that rules allowing a maximum of six people per table and wearing facemasks when not seated, would continue.

“The advice from Nphet [the National Public Health Emergency Team] is that people who are fully vaccinated indoors, don’t need to observe social distancing,” he said. “But because there will be children there, because of the staff that aren’t fully vaccinated, we’ll continue to apply those rules and regulations around social distancing.”

Liz Canavan, an assistant secretary general at the Department of An Taoiseach, told the Oireachtas health committee that less than 3,000 of the 40,000-plus queries received by the health department’s digital Covid certificate helpline in the past 48 hours had been dealt with.

The service, which was designed to assist people intending to use the certificate for travel within the EU, has received unprecedented demand since the resumption of non-essential travel from Ireland on Monday.

Meanwhile, as of yesterday morning, all adults over the age of 18 can register for a Covid-19 vaccine. The HSE said people aged 18 to 24 were now eligible to register for one of the mRNA vaccines.

“People aged 18 to 34 can also choose to get a Janssen vaccine at a participating pharmacy, depending on supplies,” it said. “The Janssen vaccine is a viral vector vaccine. People aged 18 to 34 who are already registered with a pharmacy and waiting for an appointment should also register on HSE.ie now. Depending on vaccine supplies over the coming weeks, you may be offered an appointment for either an AstraZeneca vaccine, or the recommended mRNA vaccines, earlier than at the pharmacy.”

The Department of Health recorded 1,378 new cases of Covid-19 yesterday. It said 96 patients were being treated for the disease in hospital, including 22 in intensive care units.

Varadkar said the wave of new Covid infections connected to the Delta variant was serious but circ*mstances were different because of the vaccine programme. “We need to ramp up the vaccination programme and that is what we are doing,” he said.

“We need to make sure we continue to improve; test, trace and isolate and that is what we are doing, with antigen testing coming on board in the next week or so we’ll be testing more people than ever before in the pandemic.

“When it comes to deaths, 2,000 cases a day is more like 200 cases a day back in January. I think we will follow a similar course to other countries, which are ahead of us in the Delta wave; Netherlands, Portugal, Israel. We could see hospitalisations in the hundreds — if that is the case that is manageable.”

Ronan Glynn, the deputy chief medical officer, said the incidence of the disease in Ireland was continuing to increase, with the 14-day rate rising from 93 per 100,000 in late June to 246 100,000 this week. “The five-day moving average of cases has increased from 300 to 1,182 cases per day over the same period,” he tweeted yesterday.