Tom Bourke's beer garden has an uninterrupted view of Croagh Patrick.
The owner of The Towers gastropub on the Westport's quay knows this precious outdoor space is the key to his future in business, when and if he can open.
"I weatherproofed the garden because when Covid came I lost one third of my indoor seating," he told RTÉ’s This Week.
Tom put down an astroturf floor and put up a stretch tent to cover part of the garden. He also installed heating and lighting, extending his gastropub by a further 80 seats.
But with possibly months to go before Tom can get bums on seats, he is doing whatever he can to keep hope alive.
"We’re starting takeaway this weekend, just to get out of the house and focus the brain on working again and keeping busy," he said.
Tom’s wife Aoife runs The Creel Cafe also on the quay.
Closed since 22 December, she too has started weekend takeaway, providing lunches, coffees and scones for walkers along the harbour.
"There’s an awful lot of work involved when you are opening back up from absolutely nothing. The shelves are bare, the fridges are bare. You have to order all the food, pack it and prep it," she said.
The Creel Cafe does not have a dedicated outdoor space, but Aoife is longingly eyeing the wide pavement outside her door, or the grassy area across the street.
"It would be fantastic if we could use that," she said, adding that it is council-owned and she is limited by what the council will allow.
Fáilte Ireland has announced spring grants for businesses to develop outdoor spaces.
Local authorities can also tap into national funding for this. It remains to be seen whether parasols will be any match for the wild Atlantic breezes.
Aoife and Tom do not expect foreign visitors, who usually make up about 30% of tourists coming to the area. Their hope is that staycationers will fill this gap.
But if inter-county travel or indoor dining do not return this year they say survival will be threatened.
"I’d have to really reconsider if I would bother opening at all," Aoife said.
"With the reduced capacity you’d be keeping maybe skeleton staff. It’s very hard to know would it be profitable."
In the centre of Westport, the red facade of Cosy Joe’s stands out in the cold February sunshine.
But owner Joe O’Malley dreads what year two of prolonged Covid restrictions will do to him and fellow pub owners.
"I think it’s going to be detrimental if we can’t get back to some sort of normality in the pub trade for this year," he said.
Cosy Joe’s has a small covered outdoor area, and last year Joe took over a couple of parking spaces on the street as a pilot project. But he’s not convinced that any of this will help.
"If you’re confined to just 15 people in an outdoor space it’s not even worth opening," he said.
Joe also owns The Porter House, a traditional wet pub in the town. He says he is glad of Government supports, but that the costs of staying shut keep mounting all the same.
"It’s a joke what’s going on with the insurance industry for this particular trade," he said.
"We’re closed for a year. You renew your premium, you’re saying 'Well look I’ve no public liability’, which is where the big cost is, but yet they’re still looking for the same premium and it’s wrong."
He believes that any move by Government to increase the 9% VAT rate for hospitality back to 13.5% this year, or next, would bury the pub trade.
"That would be detrimental if they started increasing VAT. That would be absolutely the final nail in the coffin," he said.
The Tánaiste recently indicated that the 9% VAT rate, due to end in December 2021, may be retained in the next Budget.
Joe O’Malley is also sceptical that staycations can save Ireland’s tourist sector in the long term.
"You might be inundated with the local tourists, but that’s going to wear itself out very quickly. It will be a novelty for the first while and then it will start easing back."
Promotion to push staycations
Fáilte Ireland is pinning its hopes for the 2021 on record household savings said to top €13bn. Its Destination Towns promotion will encourage people to take multiple small breaks in Irish towns this year.
On James Street, the family run Clew Bay Hotel gleams white, but its windows are dark. Darren Madden goes in every day to check that everything is working.
He said: "We’ve the heat on. It’s cold at the moment. The building will deteriorate if it doesn’t get love. We’ve someone in the hotel at night."
While some places have accepted bookings for Easter and the May bank holiday, Darren believes any reopening before June is too optimistic.
"It’s giving people false hope where you have availability open and you are taking bookings. If it opens earlier, we’ll work towards that," he said.
Four solid months of Irish holiday business saw Darren though the first year of the pandemic. Now, he says the Government must support business through a long recovery.
"The VAT is something that we haven’t been able to take advantage of yet," he said. "The Government should come out and give us clarity for a number of years that we would have that support to get our feet back on the ground."
He said the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme will have to be kept in place for a time after hospitality gets up and running. He believes this would give owners and staff some confidence.
Darren also believes that that any new stay and spend scheme from the Government should be based on vouchers - a point Tom Bourke of the The Towers pub agrees with.
"A voucher to every house in the country, something simple. Something that people can use because there was a lot of confusion with Stay and Spend," he said.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
Last year’s scheme required customers to keep receipts and claim money back.
This week, it was reported that €8m worth of receipts were sent in to Revenue. The scheme started in October just weeks before the second lockdown so was essentially cut short.
In pre-pandemic Westport, one in six of its population of 6,000 were employed in hospitality. But as year two brings more uncertainty, the sector is shrinking.
I’m told that many staff have left the sector, fearful of the stop-start nature of work during rolling lockdowns.
Beyond Westport there is a fear that reduced traffic through Ireland West Airport in Knock could limit the tourism recovery.
"The UK market has always been a big one for us. Knock Airport has always been really important." said Geraldine Horkan, CEO of Westport Chamber of Commerce.
"That’s one of the areas that we are concerned about and want to lobby on behalf of."
A support plan for regional airports was recently accounted promising €21.3m help for the country’s small airports. At Ireland West Airport, it is planned to resume some flights from next month.
The Wild Atlantic Way has seen many good years, but now every hotel, B&B, outdoor pursuits company and pub is hurting. Ms Horkan said local community support have allowed many to make it to 2021.
"When the restaurants switched to takeaway, people including myself who weren’t used to taking takeaway were all of a sudden doing just that.
"It’s the old Ní neart go cur le chéile . There’s a real sense of people coming together and supporting each other."
