What a time to be alive.

Restaurants, hairdressers, hotels, and pubs serving food can officially reopen from today. Thousands of businesses from the hospitality, service, and beauty industry will reopen to the public from today for the first time since March, most of which had been shut since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. All businesses will be required to adhere to strict social distancing and health and safety measures upon resuming trading. Restaurants, cafés, and pubs should enforce strict social distancing measures with two metres between each group of customers. Where this is not possible a one metre rule may be implemented within a controlled environment. Only pubs and bars serving a "substantial" meal worth €9.00 will be permitted to open today, and customers will only be able to stay for one hour and 45 minutes. Hairdressers, salons, and barbers will incorporate PPE for stylists, customer screenings during bookings, and the complete sanitation of work areas after each customer. No reading material will be permitted and stylists should carry out consultations from behind the client. Sanitation stations should be available at every entry and exit point. One Dublin hair salon took this accelerated Phase Three to the next level and reopened its doors at midnight. Salon Rouge in Inchicore reopened at 12am this morning and will provide a 24 hour service to clients throughout the day. "To celebrate welcoming our clients back, we will be reopening at the stroke of midnight on June 29th and will be staying open for a full 24HOURS!," they said on Facebook. "We have spent 12 weeks closed and are excited to do our very best to clear our backlog the best we can! So if you fancy a midnight manicure we can make it happen." As is to be expected, sittings for salons, restaurants and bars are fairly in demand for the next few weeks, so if you were hoping to get "back to normal" anytime soon, you might want to make yourself a booking - fast.