Laughter, clinking glasses, and queues out the door as indoor hospitality reopens

Publicans, restaurateurs, and their happy customers were delighted to be able to return to the great indoors yesterday

Ann O’Regan, Bríd O’Callaghan, Gerardine Coleman, Mary Tupper, Anne Deane, and Máiréad Walsh enjoying lunch at Jim Edwards in Kinsale, Co Cork. It's only a short trip from their homes in Riverstick, Ballinhassig, and Kinsale, but it took them over a year to get together in a pub again. Picture: Neil Michael

If there were signs of things returning to normality in one of the oldest pubs in Kinsale, Co Cork, it wasn’t the queue of people trying to get in.

Instead, it was the occasional roar of laughter coming from a table of six at lunchtime yesterday inside Jim Edwards gastropub on Market Quay.