The head of the Vintners' Federation of Ireland (VFI) has hit out at the release date of guidelines for pubs to re-open.
The guidelines for re-opening pubs will not be released until next week.
While the Government is set to meet next Tuesday to make a decision on lifting the final phase of coronavirus lockdown restrictions.
Paul Moynihan, incoming president of the VFI, has said this is not enough time for his members.
He told Newstalk Breakfast: "We would of hoped that we would have guidelines out this week so we could kind of get organised, get our stock in, get our staff organised, etc.
"But given a few days notice to open back up a business is very difficult".
"We were hoping that we would have the guidelines out this week so we could look at them, scrutinise them and know exactly what we need to do to our premises.
"We have a general idea from the re-opening of pubs as restaurants... and we've seen how it's worked.
"But still for us as only alcohol - we call it a wet pub - to re-open on Monday week, we haven't seen any guidelines yet.
"That's only 10 days now - I think if they're talking about maybe being out next Wednesday, so we'll probably have four or five days - and maybe two/three working days - I don't know how that's possible to try and turn your premises around."
"A lot of the work is done, but the tweaking of the final issues: we need to get stock in next week, organise your staff.
"We've got to put the staff and ourselves through some training stuff before we re-open.
"We have to be very careful - we're very interested in opening in a very safe manner.
"We want to make this work for ourselves and for the society as a whole.
"We don't want to put anybody in danger, we want to make sure we get this right and we want to bring all the agencies with us.
"Give us the guidelines that we need and we'll do it, and we'll make sure it works".
He says he understands people's concerns given a rise in the number of cases.
"I've seen the numbers yesterday but... I don't want people to panic and I don't think we should panic.
"The rolling 14 day figure is positive and that's the figure that most agencies look at to re-open.
"If that can stay low, I think we've every chance.
"The other side of it is that the pubs and restaurants [that] are open, there's been no clusters associated with the pubs that have opened so far - so that's a very positive thing.
"And I think it shows that the premises that are open are set up in a way that we can trade efficiently and safely".
