The ban's first hours: For some smokers the Sunday midnight moment passed almost unnoticed, writes Roisin Ingle
"It's a sad day for Ireland," said Sheena McGinley (26), from Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, at midnight on Sunday as the smoking ban passed into law.
She and her friends had brought Marlboro Lights and heavy hearts to the Village on Dublin's Wexford Street, to see in the ban. As it turned out they were still puffing happily away after midnight. Ashtrays remained on tables and nobody was ejected from the pub for indulging their now outlawed habit.
"It would be impossible to enforce it so quickly," said a barman as smokers enjoyed their last drink and smoke in a Southern Irish pub.
"I think it's going to change everything," said Ms McGinley, who described herself as a social smoker. "It will be socially divisive and your night will be different because you will always be thinking about where you can go for a cigarette."
Her friend, Lorna Powell (26), from Templeogue, is a non-smoker but spent the night clutching an unlit cigarette in "solidarity" with her friends.
Sinéad (27) from Co Dublin said she thought the smoking ban was misplaced. "It's perverse when you look at how much bigger the problems are with alcohol in this country. What is anybody doing about that?"
Close by, a woman who didn't want to be named sat chain-smoking determinedly on her own as the minutes ticked away. She gave up six weeks ago but wanted to mark the occasion.
"I was out with my friends and I told them I had gone home, but I just wanted to sit here in my favourite pub and smoke for the last time. I see what I am doing tonight as some kind of punishment. After midnight that is definitely the end of cigarettes for me," she said.
While some were mourning, others were celebrating, like Keith Robertson (26), Ballymun. "I think it's great," he said. "Hopefully it will help me quit. It's about time somebody in this Government did something proactive. But I'm just worried about whether it will be properly enforced. It might just be treated as a joke."
His brother is a barman in Ballymun. "He thinks it's going to be a nightmare to enforce. He reckons there will be loads of trouble."
As midnight passed, musician and smoker Paddy Casey wandered in and said he would also try to use the ban as an opportunity to give up. But would he miss smoking during gigs? "The stage is another country," he said.