The rural pubs are absolutely wedged. A âŹ9 meal would go down well now.
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LK City for me
The Diamond was heaving today 
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I passed Conoles earlier and it the felt like place was about to leave the ground and head for outer space.
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If I donât have another dose of covid after today itâs all the same
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Youâd nearly be disappointed if you didnât have it by Tuesday
I hear a publican in NCW who made the front page of the papers and has since done u turn on his covid stance, has tested positive for covid (again) and the pub is temporarily closedâŚ
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Does anyone have a sub?
Consent
âWe only had five customers one day⌠Iâm using savings to stay openâ â Entertainment venues continue to count cost of Covid
Ross McCoy, manager of Limerickâs Level Up Arcade Bar, which had five customers on St Stephenâs Day. Photo: Don Moloney
Eoghan Moloney
January 05 2022 02:30 AM
Indoor entertainment businesses have been ravaged by the Covid-19 pandemic and many are still staring oblivion in the face as they tiptoe into 2022.
As Covid-19 cases hit new highs during the Christmas period, many businesses reported earnings far below pre-pandemic levels and often not enough to break even.
Alan OâGrady, owner of Limerickâs Level Up Arcade Bar, said he had had to use savings to keep his business afloat and was unsure whether he could do it much longer.
âThe end of December was absolutely dreadful,â Mr OâGrady said.
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âWe had five customers on St Stephenâs Day. On New Yearâs Eve we did âŹ243.50.
âThese are supposed to be some of our busiest nights of the year,â
Mr OâGrady said a soft opening of his business in late December 2019 was the âworst thing to happenâ as they traded for four days and this was used to calculate a weekly CRSS payment of just âŹ42.90 per week for a 7,000 sq ft premises with 14 full-time staff.
âSome businesses are getting up to âŹ5,000 per week and thatâs great for them but there are certain individual cases, like mine, where it is clearly not working,â he said.
The latest set of restrictions, ordering indoor entertainment venues to close at 8pm, came as another huge blow.
âWe tried to adjust to the earlier opening hours and opened from 2pm to 8pm and my first customer arrived at 6pm the first day.
âI tried that for a whole week and burned through a lot of money and it just doesnât pay.
âWith the new restrictions and the rising costs of electricity â not to mention my insurance going up 125pc in the past year â I need to do about âŹ650 per day to break even. At the moment, Iâm doing about âŹ240.
âIâm in limbo because if I close, I get very little and if I stay open I lose a bit. Either way Iâm going to lose.
âIâm now using savings to stay open and I have to make a decision to keep going or close for good.â
This time of year is usually the busiest for Edward Ahern, owner of Kids Town soft play centre, in Corbally, Limerick, but Mr Ahern reports business to be âdecimatedâ and roughly a quarter of what they usually are.
âParty dates and other bookings have just completely dried up overnight,â Mr Ahern said.
âWeâre devastated. For instance, Iâve seven bookings for next weekend whereas across a normal busy weekend I could have 10 times that.
âWe opened this morning at 10am and no child came through the door until five past one.â
He had to let part-time staff go as there simply wasnât the business to support them, having been closed for much of the last 22 months.
He says he understands completely why some people arenât willing to go to indoor businesses like his. But he says he canât operate âfor much longerâ with turnover at current levels.
He says there is mixed messaging around places like his.
âThe advice is for people not to mix and to keep to their own households but weâre also being told that we can operate, so theyâre telling you not to come in here but telling us to stay open â itâs very frustrating.â
Meanwhile, Bowling Buddies, in Tralee, Co Kerry, would usually be a hive of activity in the evenings at this time of year, but business is âway downâ in comparison to pre-pandemic levels, Sam Fitzell says.
âBusiness has been hit pretty hard,â Mr Fitzell said. âWe would normally have been busy from 7-10 in the evenings but thatâs obviously all gone now with the earlier closing and weâve lost pretty much the majority of our parties. Weâd usually have a good few parties every weekend, now weâre lucky if we have one.â
He said business was âat least 30-40pcâ lower than usual and footfall due to being close to a shopping centre was a third of the usual .
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Anyone would think we were in the grip of a pandemic.
But if he only opened from 7pm to 10pm there would probably be less covid spread than in a cafe opened 7am to 8pm and heâd stay afloat. People only go bowling in the evening. Itâs this kind of blanket no thought legislation that is the killer for business here. Tony as usual only thought about the pubs but stopping a panto at 8pm and pushing it forward to 3pm with the same crowd has absolutely no impact on the spread of covid.
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Not to be glib about this but businesses often have to dip into their savings to trade through rough periods.
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Itâs a fair point. In this case however the government are actively encouraging people not to use his business and curtailing his ability to trade. The problem is there has been so much squandering of money at the early stages of Covid in supporting businesses that didnât need it (and gov did it for all the right reasons tbf) they canât properly support the businesses that really need it now.
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He is in a particularly shit spot. He had just opened in late December 2019, so his turn over is being judged off a few days basically, when hardly anyone even knew the place existed. They were actually fairly busy the two times I was there this year.
The face on him in the picture itâs only for a few more weeks . January is quite for pubs anyway
I think thatâs fair to an extent.
I feel very sorry for businesses who, in good faith, took bookings for indoor events up to Christmas. All the signs they were given was that it was fine to plough ahead only for a few weeks later the rug to be pulled from under their feet and they were told to cut to 50%. This was to contain Delta and not Omicron which hadnât really come on the scene at that point. The powers that be should have foreseen it.
What were the businesses to do? An impossible situation having to tell half of their audience that they couldnât come along - I know many worked around it with two shows but many didnât and just cancelled.
But businesses talking about pre pandemic levels can fuck off as far as I am concerned. It is no oneâs fault that a pandemic hit and your business being high risk in that regard. Maybe you should have adapted by now to the new normal instead of crying about it.
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Remember Tony wanted 5pm closing.
The argument for closing a pub early made some sense for pubs even if you disagree with it. Alcohol makes people less inhibited. There was no argument for closing a bowling alley or a cinema or a panto at 8pm. Business owners and the general public who wanted to possibly enjoy themselves a small bit just had to roll over and take it with no proper explanation. That has happened again and again throughout the pandemic and has led to incredible frustration, polarised society even further and probably actually damaged the fight against covid.
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Oh yes there was.
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Heâs two metres behind you!
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