It’s 1pm. Lunchtime in the restaurant. Once upon a time it was all hands on deck. No time to chat. But I’ ve the Taoiseach on speaker – on the player – and two samples of scrambled homemade tofu are going cold on the counter. Not unlike my brain, scrambled by 16 months of pivoting and tapering and, right this minute, going cold with shock.
Surprise. Now we’ll be having a domestic vaccine passport! For the National Public Health Emergency Team has suggested that it is the only way to open indoor dining safely. We can take down our “help wanted” sign and put one up that says “recently tested or infected customers need not bother”. A textbook example of a discriminatory advert.
My inner child stamps its foot at the injustice of it all and the subtle variation between the concepts of fairness and equality becomes blindingly apparent. In order to be fair to the vaccinated, and to restaurant businesses and our staff, we must treat unvaccinated younger customers unequally.
It’s not that I think it can’t work. Everything can work eventually, if you throw enough money and legislation at it. But but by the time “discriminatory” has been transmogrified into the “not so discriminatory” and the requisite technology downloaded, we will surely have reached peak vax, rendering the exercise academic. School is out for summer, why does it feel like the very first day of class?
We do not require mandatory inoculation in this country. We would never dream of withholding your children’s allowance until your child gets the MMR jab.
Modicum of protection
Most of us can be led where we need to be to protect each other, by reason and logic, in fairness. It’s just that now one’s decision not to be vaccinated, or – so much worse – one’s inability to access the vaccine can and will be used to bar you from any place of sustenance with more than a modicum of protection from the lashing rain.
We would never dream of withholding your children's allowance until your child gets the MMR jab
Public and media opinion has swung back around to sympathy towards the plight of hospitality businesses. Our government – which would obviously like nothing better than to get all businesses fully open and off the payroll – is damned for following Nphet’s advice, but even more damned if it doesn’t.
I know how they feel; since the pandemic began we restaurateurs have in fact been shouted at rather a lot. Taken to task by those who believe we are “a disgrace, greedy and reckless” on the one hand, and those, on the other, who believe we are the cafe incarnation of 1984 and have cursed us, literally and liberally, for depriving them of their rights. “Reasonable excuse.” Prove it. “Equality.” Prove it. “GDPR.” C’mon outta that . . . and now we must have another row, like with face masks and contact tracing, but louder.
Types of unfairness
Although it was patently unequal treatment, I didn’t begrudge the hotels and B&Bs their reopening ahead of standalone restaurants. It was a move made in order to limit the total number of indoor diners entering into circulation, and not because there is any scientific basis for the distinction. But, although the basis of the decision may be justifiable in the interest of public health, with no date in sight for the rest of hospitality it really stings now.
And so, it’s not fair, I begin muttering again, with all the self-belief of my five year old (long may it last her). Yes, yes okay, life wasn’t meant to be fair. Because of this and because we simply must keep going on to survive, we have no choice but to seriously consider the idea of putting the vaccine bonus on a legislative footing.
In this regard, it’s important to make the distinction between the unfairness that life throws at us and that which we create with our rules and regulations, our tweaks. Like the €9 meal, gone and good riddance. Some unfairness is accidental and some is on purpose. The difference, in our industry, is 100,000 people on the pandemic unemployment payment.
Some unfairness is accidental and some is on purpose. The difference, in our industry, is 100,000 on the PUP
This latest unfairness is a system that allows only the fully vaccinated to access dining indoors and potentially other, as yet unenumerated, benefits. It will therefore have to be carefully considered and fully thought-out.
So why on earth was this proposal launched, like a grenade, six days before such a long-awaited reopening for our industry?
Now we’ll all get our say, and we’ll appoint a team to design it, and yes, naturally, there’ll be a legal challenge. Let everyone have their day in court. Then, as restaurateurs are slowly unravelled, glassy eyes fixed on a nearby food truck as we reach herd immunity, we will launch the Irish vaccine cert.
Angela Ruttledge is a restaurateur. She co-owns Monck's Green and Olive's Room