Restaurant reopening guidelines
The CEO of the Restaurants Association of Ireland (RAI) Adrian Cummins has said that the hospitality sector was looking forward to returning, but he repeated a call for all restaurants to be allowed to serve food indoors from June 2nd, the same date on which hotels will be allowed to do so.
Mr Cummins said rules permitting hotels to serve food indoors should be extended to all restaurants. “We would like to open in line with hotels because there is no difference between a hotel restaurant and an independent restaurant next door to them,” he told Newstalk Breakfast.
“The indications are that the guidelines will be, there or thereabouts, the same as last year for indoor hospitality, but the difference for outdoor hospitality will be that there will be no time limits for people,” he said.
Emergency Covid powers extension “deeply concerning”
The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) has warned it is “deeply concerned” about the Government’s extension of “extreme” Covid-19 emergency powers.
ICCL executive director Liam Herrick told an Oireachtas committee the human rights organisation does not see “any justification” for the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly retaining “unlimited” emergency powers introduced in March 2020 when the Government is easing public health restrictions.
He called for the Oireachtas to conduct an “extensive review” of the powers before any decision is taken to extend them.
Earlier this month Cabinet Ministers gave Mr Donnelly approval to extend the emergency powers until November. They were due to lapse next month.
The laws allow the state to detain people to stop the spread of the virus, restrict travel, require people to wear face coverings and prohibit some events such as large gatherings taking place.
Cyberattack disruption
There is expected to be “steady progress” in restoring Health Service Executive (HSE) systems and services in the coming days following the devastating cyberattack earlier this month.
While it may still be many weeks before the HSE’s computers are fully restored, technicians are said to be pleased with the progress being made using a decryption key provided by the attackers.
Government sources said there was still no evidence that stolen data on patients and staff had been published on the internet, despite a warning by the criminal gang behind the attack that this would happen on Monday.
The ministerial taskforce overseeing the State’s response is meeting daily to be updated on efforts to recover from the ransomware attack.
A source said there had been “steady, careful progress” with the decryption tool with “more services likely to resume in the next 48 hours”. They cautioned that the “entire process is likely to take weeks”.
Winning €6 million lotto ticket sold in Athlone
A Midlands service station in Athlone has been confirmed as the winning location for last Saturday’s winning Lotto jackpot ticket worth €6,489,165.
The winning Quick Pick ticket was sold on Thursday, May 20th at the Applegreen service station located just off the M6/N6 motorway in the Arcadia Retail Park in Athlone, Co Westmeath.
Saturday night’s €6.4 million win marked the third Lotto jackpot to be won so far this year. This follows a €12.7 million jackpot win by a Kilkenny player in the April 14th draw and an €8.5 million jackpot win by an online player from Limerick in the January 27th draw.
