Paul McDonald and Helen Noonan opened Bastion restaurant in Kinsale, County Cork, in December 2014.
It's a small restaurant, seating a maximum of 40 people, pre-Covid restrictions, but the couple's hard work was rewarded in October 2019 when Bastion was awarded a Michelin star.
Six months later in March 2020 they were forced to close their doors when the country went into lockdown in response to the first wave of Covid-19.
Paul and Helen decided against offering a takeaway menu. However, they had been looking forward to re-opening Bastion tomorrow, and had been preparing for weeks beforehand, including 10 days of intensively trialling new dishes and techniques with a full kitchen team.
He said the postponement of re-opening indoor hospitality has been disheartening.
"Obviously it's greatly frustrating, not just for me and for my business, but also for the guys who work with us," Paul McDonald told RTÉ News.
"We spent the last 10 to 12 days preparing and trialling new ideas. The guys had part-time work and they quit that to come back to us, so to have the rug pulled out from under us is a little bit disheartening."
He said, as an industry, hospitality has lost around 20% of its workforce, who have move to other industries to find work: "That's going to take years to claw back."
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Mr McDonald said there is a financial strain attached to the stop-start re-opening too, but adds optimistically: "We have a restaurant - we will make this work."
However, he does not believe the system of vetting customers as proposed will work.
"We are not the police," he says. "Our industry is about hospitality and welcoming people and making them feel comfortable - it's a very difficult situation."
