IN the first week of the New York smoking ban, one of Ciaran Staunton’s best customers at O’Neill’s Irish bar in Manhattan stood out in the rain when pulling on his pipe. It was a doomed attempt at compromise. “He said the rain kept quenching his pipe,” says Staunton.

Before the ban, the customer, a semi-retired man from Cavan, would drink four or five pints in the pub at least four evenings a week, Staunton claims. “Now he drops in the odd time.”

It’s not just the once-loyal pensioner he has lost. Gone are the cosmopolitan-drinking office workers and the lawyer who used to order half bottles of Stolichnaya Gold vodka when he dropped in for a quiet smoke.

The lunch trade is still healthy but the “happy hour” customers looking for a post-work drink who would light their cigarettes as they walked through the door have all but disappeared, says Staunton.

The Irish-American publican paints a grim picture of what has happened to New York’s bars since the introduction of the ban in the city last year. According to Staunton, sales of alcohol in his pub are down 20% as a direct result of the new anti-smoking rules.

“It’s very hard. For the first week, people came in, ordered their beer, and went back outside to light up,” he says. “Some of them were complaining. Then they stopped coming in altogether.”

Ireland’s publicans believe this is what will happen here too after March 29, when a smoking ban is introduced across the country by Micheal Martin, the health minister.

Prisons, psychiatric hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, hotel rooms and private dwellings will be the only indoor venues in which lighting up will be legal.

The exact rules have yet to be published but the draft legislation says all establishments, including restaurants, fast-food outlets and public houses, that allow smoking on their premises could incur fines of €3,000.

Publicans argue the ban will discourage smokers from going into bars and their businesses will suffer. The government says statistics show most smoking customers, and an increased number of non-smokers, have said they will want to go to pubs.

According to surveys conducted by the Office of Tobacco Control, the number of people who say they will boycott pubs because of the ban is small. Its figures claim 81% of the public, including 61% of smokers, believe the smoking ban should be enforced.

Among tourists, the numbers indicate a similarly positive attitude. Frank Magee, the chief executive of Dublin Tourism, said its research showed an estimated 70% of visitors don’t smoke on visits to Ireland. Magee said Dublin Tourism believed there was potential to encourage even more non-smokers to visit the city.

The body, which represents 12,000 bars, restaurants and hotels, is rowing in behind the government. It is branding all its promotional material with a logo reading “Dublin: a breath of fresh air”.