Pubs Closing Down Rural Ireland

You'd be surprised just how prevalent drunk driving still is the sticks.

Layne Rotten Shackle wrote: »

A good pub with good pints will attract business.

Location, location, location.

If they are in an area that isn't well populated, forget about it.

The costs of having Sky/BT sports in pubs and the fact cheap alternatives such as Kodi, Android boxes etc exist for homes. Personally love been the pub for big matches for the atmosphere

Health issues, drink driving

Locals been too old to go/dying off, can't get lifts etc

The sheer bordem of heading out to find it's only yourself and the barman in the place

I never see AGS checkpoints in my area. Thurles traffic Corp only enforce the law in urban areas. You never see them outside the urban areas of Thurles and Nenagh. I’d say 60% of drivers on this back road after 12am are intoxicated. I assume this is why the rural pubs here do very well. I was in Borrisoleigh at 1am and you could see the GAA heads and farmers struggling to walk to their cars and jeeps. My gf at the time called Templemore station and they didn’t even respond to it.

Broken Glass everywhere
People Pissing at the counter you know they just don't care
I can't take the smell, can't take the noise
No barista in the village so I got no choice

"Pubs closing down in a dramatic sign of progress in Irish society. Great news indeed."

Really? People are just drinking at home instead nowadays. I think it's pretty grim sitting at home half watching TV n flicking through Facebook, boards etc while drinking.
Plus people are drinking more at home as well, if a couple had 60 quid to spend on a Saturday night, that'll get them 10 drinks n a taxi home. No big deal.60 quid in Tesco's gets a bottle of vodka and a slab of cans.

Me and my dad's local is a 10 min walk away from the house but the interesting thing is there are 3 pubs on our street and around the corner 4 others but it's the city rather than a rural village

From passing the pubs on the street the mid week trade looks very bleak but the weekends they seem busy enough. It's the locals who keep them going tbh

Staplor wrote: »

... So they don't bother cleaning the lines from the keg...

This is nonsense. Guinness and Heineken clean the lines for their products themselves, and they have done so for ages now.

whisky_galore wrote: »

Pubs are closing down in cities, let alone rural Ireland.
You have to have something to attract people other than drink; be that food, live music, film shows or gimmicks/giveaways. Compete or close down.

The days of the pub that did nothing other than drink and stale crisps are numbered.

Yet pub owners still refuse to accept that which is why they lobbied so hard for minimum unit pricing

Noveight wrote: »

In my own rural area you could get stuck in to the GAA, a walking/jogging club, dance lessons, weight classes, music lessons, genealogy workshop or the Tidy Towns. I think they even had painting classes going for a while. Each of the above take place at least once a week in the village and are relatively inexpensive if not cost free. Of course not every rural area would have such a decent variety but cheaper, healthier alternatives to the pub do indeed exist. Are they more enjoyable? Depends what you're into I suppose, sometimes all I'd want after the day is a quiet pint and a bag of Taytos by the fire.

Do you actually think that the list you've given is a realistic alternative to the pub for the people most affected by their closures or their inaccessibility due to the drink driving laws? The people that are most commonly affected by this change are older men - retired men living in the country and older farmers and the like.

Of your list - what does getting stuck into the GAA mean? They're hardly going to start playing at their age. And if they haven't been involved up to now they're probably not going to be too sought after for training teams. So you're left with committee work? Not everyone's idea of fun.

Walking / jogging clubs are nice, but again you're talking about a lot of elderly people or farmers who need the daylight hours for work. And for elderly people, a walking club might not be suitable.

Dance / weight classes - of the people most affected these would hardly be used. Same for genealogy and music classes. The tidy towns is something that doesn't sound fun to a lot of people too.

Then of course, they have to find activities that they're friends are also interested in. It's no use if you're the only one from your social group taking these things up, you're losing your friends if that's the case.

I'm not trying to be overly negative and as I say overall I think the pub culture dying out is a good thing. But I do think there are human casualties of it and pretending that activities such as the ones you've mentioned are adequate to help these people adapt is at best naïve. I think it's a problem that society is burying their head in the sand about while these people die off.

I'd say there are multiple reasons why country pubs are closing. Tougher drink-driving laws and responses discourage a lot of people from "chancing it". This is obviously a good thing but in reality have the tighter controls resulted in a reduction in road accidents in the rural areas?
Also the smoking ban probably had a detrimental effect. A lot of these pubs were frequented by oul lads who would have a few pints and a few smokes. If he has to stand outside now he might as well not bother going.

Also back in the day you had Rte1 and Rte2 in the bog. There was nothing on telly half the time so going to the pub had some entertainment value. Now houses in the farthest flung areas of Kerry, Mayo or Donegal have satellite/cable tv 24/7 as well as internet.