A working group will be set up to examine how to reopen the remainder of the hospitality industry safely in the coming weeks. It comes as the Government is facing mounting internal and external resistance to plans to delay the reopening of indoor hospitality and only allow fully vaccinated people inside. A Government delegation led by Mr Martin told representatives of the hospitality industry that a mid-July reopening of indoor hospitality might still be possible if new data from the UK indicated lower hospitalisation and death rates from the Delta variant. A date as early as July 19th was mentioned at the meeting. Publicans and restaurant groups were told the vaccine certificate for indoor dining may never be needed, but that the Government felt it would be useful to develop it in case the Delta variant had a more detrimental impact than expected or in case another variant developed in future.
The Licensed Vintners Association, the Vintners Federation of Ireland and the Restaurants Association of Ireland “pushed back heavily” on the vaccine certs as being “completely unworkable and unfair”, sources said. The LVA said that if the Government implemented the system, it would “really see what chaos in the hospitality sector looks like”. They also called on hospitality workers to be prioritised for vaccines. At a lengthy and fraught meeting of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party on Wednesday, Taoiseach Micheál Martin was told that Fianna Fáil was now “toxic” and “irrelevant” to young people who were “up in arms”. Mr Martin told the meeting his conscience was clear on the Government’s decision to temporarily delay indoor dining. He said the easy thing would have been to reopen but told his TDs “we took the tough decision”. Comments are closed.
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