KEVIN MOLONEY had the look of a condemned man as he lit up a cigarette in McDaid’s pub in Dublin yesterday. He glanced dejectedly at a picture on the wall of Brendan Behan, the bar’s most famous regular, before turning to sip his Guinness.

“That man would be making all sorts of noises if he were alive today. He’ll be spinning in his grave, dying all over again, I reckon,” said Mr Moloney, pointing at a portrait of the playwright who once described himself as “a drinker with a writing problem”.

Days after the 40th anniversary of Behan’s death, the Irish Republic last night became the first country in Europe to ban smoking in the workplace, including pubs and restaurants. On the stroke of midnight a nation that has exported its pub culture across the world enacted a law so strict that only the Himalayan mountain kingdom of Bhutan, where tobacco is banned altogether, can now boast harsher anti-smoking legislation. Dozens of special “smoke-ins” were held across Ireland last night as smokers bade farewell to their precious rights.

From now on they will be committing a criminal offence every time they light up in one of Ireland’s 7,000 pubs, clubs or restaurants, and will be fined up to €3,000 (£2,100), together with the proprietor.

“It’s the biggest change to this country since the civil war. I mean, this is Ireland, what’s going on?” complained one smoker in the Temple Bar pub in Dublin city centre as he challenged a friend to visit every pub in the country on a non-stop smoking tour.

The ban has led to feverish speculation about how it will change life in Ireland, where smokers include about 25 per cent of the population and a pipe-smoking dog from Co Westmeath called Jessie.

There have been predictions that snuff will catch on and that the country’s pubs will be flooded with herbal cigarettes. Anti-litter campaigners say that the streets will be awash with up to 20 million cigarette butts. Thousands of smokers were last night planning ways to avoid the ban, which applies to all enclosed spaces designated as workplaces, including company cars.

Amid predictions that the law could lead to the creation of a continental-style café culture in Dublin, hundreds of pubs and restaurants across the country have extended outdoor areas.

One Cork publican has come up with the ingenious idea of lifting the roof off part of his bar, while at Johnnie Fox’s pub outside Dublin the owner has parked a converted 1952 Leyland Puma bus outside the front door and renamed it “the Happy Smoking Bus”. To ensure that the bus is not included in the ban, no staff will set foot in it and it will stay rooted to the spot. In McDaid’s, once Dublin’s main morgue, tourists and local people enjoyed their last cigarettes together.

“If somebody had told me five years ago that there would be a smoking ban in Ireland I would never have believed it,” Colm O’Bera, the barman, said. “I reckon it’ll be like the euro when that came in: it’ll take some getting used to but after a few weeks most people will adjust.”

There have been many critics of Ireland’s smoking ban, not least rank-and-file police officers. A spokesman for the Garda Representative Association described it as “the most ill-conceived legislation ever conceived in this country”.

Publicans in some traditional rebel strongholds, including counties Kerry and Galway on the west coast, have vowed not to enforce the ban. Micheal Martin, the Irish Health Minister, has brushed aside suggestions of chaos and predicted that the ban will be a resounding success.

Although there are only 41 “tobacco control officers” to police the ban, they will be helped by 350 environmental health officers as well as a telephone complaints line for members of the public to report smokers.

And although many traditionalists believe that the smoke-filled boozer is a crucial part of Ireland’s image, Mr Martin can content himself with opinion polls showing that up to 70 per cent of the public supports the ban.

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