It's a family day out: Pub owner who still closes on Good Friday

Louise Walsh

"It's a family day out for the pub trade as far as I'm concerned," said Co. Meath publican who still closes on Good Friday, eight years after the ban on selling alcohol on the Easter day was lifted.

Until 2018, pubs in Ireland were not normally permitted to open on either Good Friday or Christmas Day.

This law, dating from 1927, also included Saint Patrick's Day, though that prohibition was later repealed.

On Good Friday, March 30th 2018, alcohol was sold in pubs for the first time in 91 years - but not in Lawless' Pub in Dunshaughlin, where owner Declan still insists on keeping the doors of the Main Street pub firmly shut.

Declan's father, Jimmy, first took over the family pub in 1955, and he believes his dad would also keep the pub shut on Good Friday if he was alive today.

"Good Friday has always been and always will be a family day out in the bar trade to me," he told LMFM Radio's Late Lunch programme.

"It's a day off for me and my staff.

"It's nothing to do with religion that I close.

"My customers also enjoy getting away from me for the day," he laughed.

"They will go somewhere else for the change and come back to me the next time they are out.

"I've no problem with other people opening their bars or going for a drink on Good Friday. In fact, I'm paying for my younger staff to head into Dublin for their late Christmas Party. I won't be going because I'll cramp their style but I'm funding it to say thank you for all their hard work and loyalty.

The father of two grown-up children hopes to go for a cycle on Friday with his wife Fiona if the weather is good.

"I haven't been on the bike for a year because I had a leg injury, but I hope the two of us will cycle to maybe as far as Kilcock, have a coffee and come back and just enjoy the day."

Declan believes that moves will be in place in future times to open the bars on Christmas Day too but he hopes any proposals will prove futile

"I hope we will never see this day happen. But if it happens, you won't see me opening.

Declan, who took over the bar in 1978, remembers when he was brought in to work alongside his dad when he was a child on Good Friday, and his job for the day was to clean the ceilings of cigarette smoke before the bar opened for the Fairyhouse Races.

"The ceiling would be thick with smoke. You'd end up with blonde hair because of the resin and it would be all over your hands and clothes, but you were still with your family."