"We feel that this is best practice for our staff and customers."
Dublin venue Pygmalion is set to offer free antigen tests to its customers as Covid-19 cases continue to rise throughout the country.
All ticket holders for club nights at the popular South William Street venue will be offered a test upon arrival. These tests will be self-administered, though staff will be available to assist if necessary.
A subsequent negative test result will be required in order for punters to proceed with entry to the venue. Should a customer receive a positive antigen test result, a refund will be issued.
The practice will be mandatory, though a start date has yet to be confirmed.
The antigen test element will only apply to the nightclub space of Pygmalion, which opens from 11pm. It will not apply to the venue's bar and restaurant.
"We feel that this is best practice for our staff and customers alongside the need to produce a digital Covid vaccination certificate, and purchasing tickets for contact tracing purposes," said Pygmalion booker Colin Perkins.
"Countries such as Germany and Sweden have had success with antigen testing with support from their respective governments in implementing testing," he added.
"Research shows rapid tests are 99.9% accurate. This means the chance of getting a false-positive result – where the result shows as positive but is actually negative – is extremely low."
Pygmalion's antigen-focused announcement comes on the same day that Taoiseach Micheál Martin hinted the Government may look to make antigen kits "more affordable" for the public as the winter months kick in.
It has previously been
argued that free tests should be issued in bulk to families across Ireland, while in recent days NPHET has
recommended that anyone frequently attending nightclubs should take an antigen test twice a week.
Speaking on
Sunday, Taoiseach Martin argued that "nothing can be ruled out" in relation to Covid-19.
"We have reopened society," he said.
"The economy has bounced back. Those are the positives in terms of thousands and thousands of people coming back to work, in terms of enterprises that might have thought they didn't have a future a year ago back up and running, so there are many positives to reopening society.
"But it is having an impact on the Delta variant being so transmissible. It's having an impact on hospitalisation, on our health services, as it is across Europe, and across the world, so we have to be very mindful of that.
"We can never rule out having to take measures to reduce that impact," he concluded.
