Cobh pub joins rebel rank and lights up
With its owner, Danny Brogan, in absentia, the woman ruling the roost in his place was having none of it.
On the one hand we were treated to TV pictures of Danny puffing to his heart’s content in rebel Galway pub Fibber Magees and telling the nation his pub would follow suit. Down Titanic way, his stand-in manager said not on her shift.
Danny claimed he had signed up to the stand taken by publicans Ciaran Levanzin and Ronan Lawless, who have created a smoking room, indoors, at Fibber Magee’s. He had his own smoking room “enclosed, out the back,” he said.
He blamed a downturn in revenue since the introduction of the smoking ban in May for his act of defiance.
“It’s all about survival. In my case, I don’t do food and 90% of my customers are smokers so I need to hold on to them. Takings have fallen by between 30-50% since the ban came in so I am delighted to be taking the stance.
“One of my customers, an elderly lady who used to come in every night for a cup of tea and four or five fags to catch up on the local goings-on hasn’t been in since the ban and I think that’s very sad. It was a social outing for her.”
He doesn’t wish to end up in court for his actions, Danny said, but he wants to show solidarity with his Galway colleagues. He wants the Government to compromise. Speaking from Fibber Magees yesterday, Danny said the feedback from his pub in Cobh has been “superb.”
