Irish Examiner View: Young must show their civic duty

That ministers and their medical advisers were looking very closely at the arguments for closing bars — and possibly cafes and restaurants — following the pattern set by the Italian, French, and Spanish governments is no secret. That the display of gross irresponsibility, recklessness, and selfishness seen in jam-packed bars on Saturday helped to settle the matter for them comes as no surprise.

The participants were mostly young and, presumably, healthy, but their behaviour — and the failure of the bar’s management to close the craic down, or at least thin the crowd — disgusted a country in which clinics and hospitals are working flat out to save lives and the vast majority of people and businesses are doing their best to follow the advice they’ve been getting from doctors.