Restaurant’s frustration as outdoor dining pods are destroyed in village

THERE is frustration and disappointment as a local restaurant’s outdoor dining pods were destroyed by a group of people last weekend.

Nico’s Café and Restaurant, located on Tower Road in Clondalkin have been left with three damaged outdoor dining pods after they were wrecked by a group who were using the pods last weekend.

One of the staff at the restaurant, Joseph, told The Echo: “Our outdoor dining pods were tampered with by some [people] last weekend.

“The worst thing was last Friday they damaged three of the pods after they had their takeaway pizza. We managed to temporarily fix it, but Saturday night they damaged them again.

“We caught them from CCTV and have already reported to Gardai.

“The idea was nice to have these beautiful pods in our village for people to use and meet, but it seems it hasn’t worked out at all.”

Joseph says that the community has been left “very disappointed” with what has happened, with some even offering money to help pay for the damages and repairs.

“We do have nice customers who feel very disappointed at what happened, one even left some money for us to get it fixed – we believe there are lots more nice people,” says Joseph.

Joseph explained that since the restaurant installed the outdoor pods, there has been significant amounts of rubbish left behind by some people using them.

“We had signs inside at the beginning to allow people sit in and use them. It didn’t work out as every morning the first thing is cleaning all the rubbish that they left there,” Joseph explained.

“It’s fine to do so as we expect it will happen, but soon those signs were damaged by them, and the flowers hanging were also stolen. I asked them politely to leave during business hours and they just ignored me.

“The real problem is those young [people] should learn to take responsibility for what they’ve done. We can afford to get it fixed, but what about next time?”.