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THE WOMAN BELIEVED to be one of Ireland’s oldest pub landladies will be pulling pints on Good Friday for the first time today.
Maura Hallinan, 98, was just eight years old when the ban on pubs opening on Good Friday was enacted.
She started working in the KLM Bar in Cork in 1968, originally running the pub with her late husband. She still works there “now and again” and will be serving drinks this afternoon.
Speaking to Cork’s Red FM today, Maura said she was too young to remember when pubs previously opened on Good Friday.
When asked her secret to a long and happy life, she said “hard work”.
“I never drank when I behind the bar and I never drank until my children were reared, and then I’d take an odd sherry and things like that.”
KLM
Speaking about the pub sharing a name with Royal Dutch Airlines, Maura explained where the moniker came from: “My late husband always said, ‘If I ever start a business I’m going to call it after the girls.’
“I’ve four girls – Frances, Kathleen, Lydia and Mary – so we were trying to juggle all the four letters together and we couldn’t get it right because we couldn’t put the F in a certain place … so we came to the conclusion of KLM.”
Maura said Aer Lingus (one of KLM’s airline partners) once contacted the pub to ask them about the name.
“They called the office and asked where we got the name and they never said anything and just said they’d send on one of their vouchers to us,” she said.
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