Iva Pocock listens to the views of pub drinkers and smokers on plans to ban smoking while food is being served.
'It won't work," says Anna Perry emphatically, "and I'm not a smoker. I hate smoke." As manageress of Cassidy's on Camden Street, she and her colleague, barman Paddy Merrigan (who is lighting up a cigarette as he speaks), are adamant that a complete ban on smoking when food is being served is a non-runner.
"Personally speaking I'd love everywhere to be no-smoking but it's not practical," adds Anna. "You'd need bouncers in the pub to enforce it. I mean how could you have an 18-year-old lounge girl telling a 70-year-old who's just forked out €20 for a round of drinks that he has to put out his cigarette?"
The answer, in her view, is to have a section permanently blocked off for non-smokers - a suggestion made by many, both bar workers and punters alike.
One pub which has already introduced a non-smoking option during "food" hours is the Club in Dalkey, where a carvery lunch is offered from 12.30 p.m. and a bar menu is available until 9.30 in the evening. Manager Vincent Brady admits that keeping the six tables allocated as non-smoking free of ashtrays and smokers is not easy.
He is a rare breed - a non-smoking, non-drinking barman, who has worked in the business for 42 years, having started at the age of 16. Based on his considerable experience, he reckons the proposal to ban smoking when any food is being served in bars will be enforced with "great difficulty".
His colleague Ciaran McGuirk, who started in the trade at an even younger age, isn't just a non-smoker. He's an ardent anti-smoker who has no qualms about stating his opinion - "smoking should be banned in all public places". For him, enforcement is not an issue.
Another non-smoker, who is enjoying his afternoon coffee in the smoker-free section of Bewleys on Westmoreland Street, reckons that limiting the ban to food-serving times only will create a difficult grey area. Like Ciaran, he believes a total ban is the only answer.
If such a ban materialised, Micheal Corrigan, a local in Doyles of College Street, says he'll get out of the music business. "I'm opening a shebeen if this happens and everyone can come in and smoke whatever they like." However, he reckons it's not going to happen unless cigarettes are outlawed, which would only do what all prohibition does, "send them into the hands of criminals".
Although a minor offence by criminal standards, smoking in the toilets would undoubtedly become more commonplace if smoking were banned in food-serving locations. Carol Dunne, who is also drinking coffee in Bewleys, but with a cigarette in hand, supposes she "might go down to the loo to have a quick one" if she couldn't smoke while having her coffee.
Another coffee-drinking smoker, Westmeath man John Smith, is disgusted by the proposals. He poses the question: "Is good coffee a drink or food?"
The answer could have momentous consequences for those looking for a hot boost of caffeine. Vincent Brady reckons the "food would have to go if there was a choice between drink and smoking or drink and food" making drinking coffee while your mates enjoy a pint a thing of the past.
Sheila Cohen, who has supplied food to pubs for years, disagrees. "Food in pubs is here to stay." She reckons the onus is on pubs to have good air conditioning. "We should be like the rest of Europe when it comes to ventilation - we're appalling here".
Chef Connor Molloy agrees. "Forget about smoking and non-smoking, just get better air-conditioning." Even though he is enjoying a cigarette with his pint in the Inn, a new pub in Dalkey with an impressive ventilation system, he admits smoking is a "pretty filthy thing to be doing, especially around food".
However, the connection between drinking and smoking, which he describes as being "burned into national culture" is mentioned repeatedly as an obstacle to stopping people smoking in pubs. This applies to regular smokers and non-smokers alike, as the phenomenon of social smoking seems highly popular, even if it's a matter of liking OPCs (other people's cigarettes).
One veteran pub-goer from Galway remembers when her local hostelry went non-smoking, a policy which lasted only a few weeks.
"Being a smoker, I have to admit it was very difficult to finish a pint without having a cigarette." Sheila Cohen has a similar view on gin and tonic. "When you're a smoker G&T just doesn't taste the same without a cigarette".
Connor's drinking mate, Paul, has visions of mountains of cigarette butts on the street outside pubs. But the notion that smokers will be puffing outside is a non-runner in Sheila's view: "This isn't California. We don't have the climate for it".
Paul's other prediction is that "smokers will never pick up non-smokers if it's all segregated", a prospect which doesn't seem to bother him that much, judging by the smile on his face as he takes another drag of his cigarette and enjoys the last of his pint.