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THE NUMBER OF Irish restaurants and takeaways shut for food safety offences in 2017 was down significantly on the same figure for the previous year – but that hasn’t stopped a new county from topping the inauspicious list, relative to its population.
As you might expect the table is dominated by Ireland’s most populous counties Dublin and Cork with 17 and 7 closures respectively. Dublin’s closures are predominantly on the south side of the Liffey with 12 orders enacted compared to the northside’s five (in Cork the honours are shared around the county, aside from Cobh, which has two closures). However it’s the county coming in third place that is perhaps most noteworthy.
Donegal, Ireland’s 8th most populated county per Census 2016 (with just under a quarter the number of people resident as Cork), nevertheless managed six separate closures last year to arrive in third place – a jump from 12th in 2016. That makes it the county with the highest closure rate (by some distance) per head of population.
Interestingly, the towns involved are spread right around the sprawling Ulster county – in Ballybofey, Manorcunningham, Dungloe, Donegal Town, Inishowen, and Creeslough.
Again, going by head of population, the highest closure rates seen after Donegal are in Sligo, Longford, and Louth.
There was good news for Roscommon however – having had seven establishments shut the previous year, in 2017 there were no closure orders whatsoever seen in the Connacht county.
Inspections
In that respect, Roscommon joins 15 other counties in having a clean bill of health for the year just past. And that doesn’t mean that no businesses were inspected in those regions – almost every food establishment (49,000 in 2016) gets seen by the HSE, which holds the contract from the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) for inspecting public-facing businesses like restaurants, each year.
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In fact the overall number of businesses closed has decreased significantly in the past 12 months – the 52 orders served were down from 62 in 2016, a drop of 16%. However, four new counties – Sligo, Westmeath, Longford, and Kildare – have made an appearance on the naughty list after keeping their noses clean in 2016.
Those restaurants and takeaways shut in Ireland last year do not take into account a further 17 orders served on other kinds of food businesses – such as butchers, juice dispensaries, and supermarkets.
The businesses closed upon inspection are split roughly 60:40 between restaurants (31) and takeaways (21). The full list for 2017 is as follows:
A table of each of the 51 businesses closed, and their location, can be viewed here.
There is only one repeat offender on 2017′s list, an Indian takeaway based on Richmond Street in central Dublin which was closed twice in February and (a number of other closed businesses share a moniker, albeit in very different parts of the country). However, certain areas of Dublin boasted two closures apiece: Drumcondra on the city’s northside, and Blackrock and Dun Laoghaire in south Dublin.
The small town of Cobh, Co Cork, is the worst offender elsewhere in the country – two businesses also received their marching orders there.
When it comes to enforcement orders, the most common offences noted by inspectors relate to issues of cleanliness, HACCP procedures (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point, which broadly relates to food safety), pest control, and equipment being unfit for purpose.
In September 2017, the FSAI began publishing the orders it was serving on businesses for the first time – information that had previously been available only via freedom of information.
Salmonella
Recent such examples include a Meath pizzeria being shut due to an issue with human excrement bubbling up in a staff toilet in December, a Cork Chinese takeaway receiving a closure order due to ‘prolific evidence of rodent droppings’ in October, and numerous pest infestations (including cockroaches, insects, and mice) causing the closure of businesses in September. Earlier in the year, in May, the kitchen of a Dublin pub was shut for 27 days due to a high-profile salmonella outbreak.
Closure orders are almost invariably hygiene-related, although they do vary in severity.
That doesn’t mean, however, that receiving one isn’t serious. Only 52 premises were closed last year, a drop in the ocean compared to the many thousands of food establishments inspected.
Registered businesses are inspected either by rota or following a valid complaint from a member of the public. If an order is served, the business remains closed until it has rectified the problem. If it is lifted, the business has its record scrubbed from the FSAI’s website after three months.
Generally speaking a business has a clear idea of what it must do with regard to getting its closure order lifted. The lifting of these bans is one aspect that has disimproved since 2016, when the average amount of time required to return to normal operations was 9.8 days. That figure is now 15. 4 days. In other words, either offences are getting worse, or businesses are struggling more than before to bring themselves back up to scratch.
Businesses in Meath and Tipperary took easily the longest to remove their enforcement orders – 84 and 56.3 days respectively. Seven businesses across the country, mostly restaurants, had their ban lifted within one working day.
Dublin, Cork, and Donegal-based businesses, the three worst-offending counties, took 7.4, 16.1, and 14.8 days respectively to get their bans lifted.
Two restaurants, one in Drumcondra, north Dublin, and the other (which has now ceased trading) in Gorey, Co Wexford, failed to get their closure order lifted entirely, with the ban remaining outstanding.
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Ok seriously, beachview tandori in laytown Meath. This place has been closed down at least 2 other times due to state of the kitchen but I bet anything they were open tonight. They are open every time I pass, these health inspections have never interfered with business. How does this happen?
@Niamh Brady: because they are special, and your not allowed say anything against them
@Niamh Brady: the closing is just a suggestion!!
@Niamh Brady: it’s Gas, the only Tandoori that you can see the Chefs at work when you are paying for the food. Unless there are rats chasing the cockroaches that the customers cannot see it looks spotless and they do a lovely tandoori Chicken !
The same inspectors closed a kitchen in Portmarnock for over a month because they “suspected “ that it was not up to standard which proved false. It caused untold stress and near ruin for the owner and the business who were tortured by the media as well. I’ve little faith in these inspectors who probably never ever set foot in a kitchen !
Maybe Donegal just have the best Inspectors?
@Anthony Clark: I was thinking the same thing. Unless the rate and quality of inspections is the same across the country, the statistics are meaningless.
The county divisions are a bit arbitrary anyway – not sure what the point is. Are we supposed to feel some kind of tribal affinity?
@Anthony Clark: Yep. Or more of them, or more inspections.
Any journo worth his or her salt would have gone beyond simply regurgitating the Food Safety Authority’s press releases and figures by now (it isn’t, um, very hygienic is it?). They would have lobbed in a decent Freedom of Information request to foi@fsai.ie, in order to work out how much the Food Safety Authority itself may be skewing the figures in terms of its own practices and those of its contracted agents.
For example, such a request might ask for the following information for a given period such as the calendar year of 2017:
(a) the number of hours spent by FSAI staff and/or their contracted agents (such as HSE) on official inspections of food premises by county,
(b) the number of premises inspected by county
(c) the amount of travel expenses and other transport costs incurred by the authority and/or its contracted agents for inspection purposes, broken down by investigations in each county, the money spent on the inspections and the average number of kilometres travelled per inspection in that county.
From these statistical inquiries, dear Watson, one can then begin to deduce that…
Does the HSE not put a prominent sign when somewhere is closed for violations? Just looking at the pic from Drumcondra where the premises itself said it was closed for “ahem” renovations. It would also be a deterrent surely if it was an obvious sign?
@Spongebobdub: They should have to display something. There was a place near me too that closed for “renovations.”
All restaurants should have a sign on the front from a government organization rating how clean the establishment is.
No jokes, or they’ll ban your account.
I was sure i read in this a few months back that there was at least 1 closure in waterford
@James Grant: That was just a whisper
@James Grant: I heard they closed Waterford
Sure who minds an aul rat running about the place. Mon Donegal!!
Click bait headline. Donegal is not a new county. It’s been around for ages.
Pity they dont visit hospitals…. How many would be forced to close i wonder
Once it wasn’t Melly’s of Killybegs.
@Ian McGrath: don’t you mean smellys
Seems Donegal people prepare food with the same level of care as they drive cars…
Divide and conquer …
Drawing any statistical conclusions on numbers below 8 is pretty pointless.
@Chris Mansfield: Not according to William Gosset
There’s been an explosion in the number of takeaways in donegal recently good to see the poor ones been closed down
Ranking these dirty premises by county is ridiculous
Last time I looked inishowen is not a town in Donegal so journal get the facts straight
@Michael Mc Laughlin: it was the village, Bridgend. But good point.
The Maid of Erin in Tipperary is not even a restaurant, it’s a pub and the fact it took 154 days before the order was lifted must indicate how disgusting it was inside and how unsafe it was to serve food. It’s funny how nobody mentions this yet they see a chinese, kebab or indian restaurant and talk about it constantly yet the orders were lifted pretty quickly apart from that tandoori place that was just as bad as the Maid of Erin. I’m also assuming they were banned from serving food because they were open everyday serving alcohol.
Hartleys in Dun Laoghaire thats the old Choís Farraige ffs
Im hungry
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