The Change Mariner

Ireland's Smoking Ban

Sunday Herald

You might once have met them at close of day, heading with florid faces to bar or restaurant with grey, smoke-filled interiors, but no more. As Alan Taylor discovers, the world's first national ban on smoking seems to have had a terrible effect on Dubliners

In the Dublin suburb of Rathfarnham, where tourists rarely venture, is a pub called Taylors Three Rock And Farmhouse Bar. On the day that Ireland became the first country in the world to ban smoking in all public places, the bar's eponymous owners have removed one of the windows and replaced it with a contraption that looks like medieval stocks. For the price of a pint, Haro Mulligan from Kellystown, with a face like a battered boxing glove, demonstrates how it works, putting his head through the big hole while holding his Guinness in his right hand and a fag in his left. Thus his body remains inside the pub while he smokes and drinks outside it, in compliance with the new edict. Everyone is happy, though how long Mulligan will be able to keep up his pose is uncertain.

Posted by Bob King at April 3, 2004 08:34 AM | TrackBack
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