Reopening indoor dining to vaccinated people, while many pub and restaurant workers remain unvaccinated, is “unacceptable”, and could result in “catastrophic” risks to health.
This is the view of People Before Profit Galway representative, Adrian Curran, who said the proposals by the Government for a return to indoor dining will see the contradictory situation of “young workers serving customers in an unsafe environment, where they will not be allowed to be served in them themselves”.
He said the situation was all the more worrying given the spike in the number of people who have contracted Covid over recent days, and the threat posed by the new Delta variant.
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“Many workers inside pubs and restaurants have not been vaccinated, and are yet to be offered the chance to get the vaccine,” he said. “Early studies suggest the Delta variant is 50 per cent more infectious than the Alpha variant, and a Lancet investigation showed it is more likely to lead to deaths and hospitalisations, especially among unvaccinated people.”
Mr Curran [pictured below] acknowledged that the hospitality industry has been among the hardest hit by the Covid pandemic, and he has called on the Government to assist the industry with supports, and protect workers with a continuance of the PUP. He has also called for laws to be introduced regarding ventilation in pubs and restaurants.
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"As our knowledge of Covid has increased, we have learned more about how it spreads,” he said. “We now know that proper ventilation is vital to stopping the spread in indoor settings. Without proper ventilation, distancing measures are mostly useless. Despite this, there are still no laws governing ventilation in the venues that are set to reopen.”
Mr Curran said indoor dining should only return when vaccines have been provided to all hospitality industry workers.
“Re-opening of indoor hospitality now - especially when there are no laws governing ventilation indoors - would be a repeat of the catastrophic mistake the Government made at Christmas,” he said. “It is high time that this government put public health ahead of private profit.”
