https://www.rte.ie/lifestyle/living/2025/0601/1515918-irish-publicans-on-the-bar-trade-the-show-is-basically-over/
seems like the Irish pub scene will soon be over.
Young people having no money left after paying rent to their landlord is one big reason plus in rural ireland pubs taken over by cocaine dealers meaning old lads afraid to go to local pub anymore is another
I also see a contradiction in complaining about pubs as dreary and have bad toilets, wanting lots of money put into decorating and chefs for a gastro experiences, then complaining about the price increase.
If you price out locals who go regularly and know each other, and replace them with people who go occasionally, dont know each other and sit at their table to eat their food and read their phones. Then you're getting what you asked for.
It seems like some of these people would like to see every pub closed. How many people in their fifties or sixties are going to the gym? Nothing wrong with people going out for a few pints and socialising in the evening. There's no atmosphere in the pubs in smaller towns now at the weekend. A lot of younger people are heading into the cities for a night out. They'll pay for a taxi between a group of them. See the pubs in Cork full on Friday and Saturday nights.
Theres something rather snide and arrogant about saying that there was no socialisation in pubs anyway, because of old lads nursing their pints at the bar.
What, do you have to do a standup routine or join a sharing circle for it to be considered socialising?
Perhaps that old lad at the bar nursing his pint lives alone and never gets to speak to anybody, finds it difficult to over share his thoughts, but still takes some value from listening to conversation and not feeling completely forgotten in the community.
The same people dismissing the dreary old holes would in the same breath preach to these lads about mental health and never once see the irony.
And no, I don't prop up any bars these days. But the sheer pretentiousness of some posters here would annoy you.
The entire system for the prevention of drink driving is flawed. That is why there have been so many cases in the courts over the last twenty years or those disqualified continue to drive . The system has no credibility . As you imply,, there have drivers disqualified at alcohol intakes that they couldn’t possibly be impaired at . There have even been cases where one test contradicted another while both were conducted by the same Garda.
I don't drink that much or that often anymore which is no bad thing.
But last year I was up in Dublin for a gig and stopped into a nearby pub afterwards for a couple of pints.
It was quiet enough in there so we sat at the bar.
About 11:25 I asked for another pint - only my third, it was no big session - before we headed back to our hotel.
Sorry we're closed, I was told.
Is this a common thing now where pubs stop serving before closing time?
Now don't get me wrong, it was no big deal not getting another drink.
What bothered me was the fact that the barman, who we were sat in earshot of, couldn't be bothered asking us if we'd like another drink before they stopped serving, especially as they stopped before closing time.
There are lots of great pubs in Ireland where the staff do a great job and there's really no better place at times than a good pub with good food, good drink and a good atmosphere.
But too many of them just don't bother putting the effort in so it's little wonder that they might be struggling.
If they really are struggling they need to work hard to earn their custom instead of taking it for granted as they did for too long.
The habit of going to thr pub has changed. One example from my life is parenting. In my parents generation, parenting was mostly done by mothers and the men could arrive in from work and go to the pub (or go to the pub after work for a few pints). But my wife and I both work full time so we split the parenting. One of us can't just be absent 3 nights a week and leave the other to do the parenting. It's not the kind of agreement we have. It would cause resentment in our relationship. I go to the gym 2 nights a week and that's fair enough for health reasons. But simply dipping for pints regularly would be out of order.
If you're parenting working full-time and parenting full-time, then there's very little room for pints. If you're paying childcare and saving for or paying a mortgage, then the good news is you probably won't have money for pints anyway, so it's all good.
You are right
My apologies I should have elaborated - the amount we had used to be sustainable because a lot more of the population was drinking and the pub was the local community hub.
Now thats changed and not everyone drinks or considers it the community hub so the amount of the pubs is now far too great. There are not enough customers spread about evenly so that the amount of pubs we had has people coming in.
If they're "evidence based" why are our "recommended limits" different from those of the UK? Do our livers differ?
When I was young there was over 20 pubs in my home town, now there are 9 pubs, and they don't open except for weekends etc. I think there's only 3 that open during the week.
Society has changed, young ones don't want to go to pubs full of old wans from the town. They have their own stuff to do.
Evidence based, on the damage that alcohol and the resulting cortisol does to human bodies is hardly "made up".
You do realise these "limits" are completely made up?
I'm not much of a drinker - mainly because I've never liked noisy pubs. I happened to be dragged into my local one a few months ago, at around 10pm on a Friday. And I really enjoyed it. There can't have been more than twenty people in the whole place (half of whom were outside in the smoking area). A far cry from my younger days, when the place would be uncomfortably crowded and sweaty, full of boisterous laughing and shouting. You could actually have a conversation.
I'd happily go back, but it closed down last month.
51mg is very very far off being drunk, but still lands you in a world of shít if caught.
For some drivers it's 20mg. FFS you can legally captain a 747 at 20mg.
My local town is the usual story of dwindling numbers of pubs. Was probably 15ish pubs plus a nightclub when I was a child, down to a dozen by the time I was drinking and it's sub 10 now with the nightclub also gone a while. This despite the town's population probably doubling since I was young.
When I started drinking, at least 2 thirds of my age group would try to get out for pints as regularly as our meagre finances allowed, especially on bank holiday weekends or the night of big games during the summer when we were off college or school. Today though the only night it seems the youth go to the pub is on 12 pubs night, when the town's streets and pubs are suddenly heaving with young revellers. It's not so much one pub at a time getting the crowd as about 4 or 5 pubs are jam packed for 2 hours while the enormous swell of punters passes through.
What it really illustrates to me though is 1. There is a huge demographic bulge of young people in the town and 2. These young people clearly aren't drinking in pubs the rest of the year because the pubs would be nowhere near as quiet if even 10% of them were there. There must be a large cohort of youths for whom going to the pub once a year at Christmas is enough. It's a major behavioural change from when I was young anyway.
We're going to see an epidemic of 40- and 50-somethings dropping dead of heart attacks due to steroids and cocaine. The drink was safer…
Two obvious complete bullshít points in the article:
It says that the "holy hour" was on Sundays to stop the workforce drinking?!?! Few people work on a Sunday. The "holy hour" was only in Dublin and Cork and was on weekday afternoons. There was a separate restriction that in most towns pubs couldn't open on a Sunday until mass was over. Both stupid restrictions long long gone.
Then the one that "everywhere that sold alcohol had to serve food". FFS, does she not remember the odd phrase "wet pub" from only four years ago? A pub that serves drink, no food. The (deeply stupid) law used to be that nightclubs and late bars had to serve food. Again, long gone
RTE should really do a little bit of fact checking on these "opinion" pieces. They try to get out of it by saying that the views are those of the author and not RTE, blah blah, but they don't tell us who the author is or where she works or what exactly qualifies her to have an opinion on this topic that is supposed to be worth hearing.
Then there's the publicans whinging as usual, a choice contribution:
"Inflation, the Living Wage, VAT, excise tax, water costs… It’s tax on tax on tax. The thing is that the government continues to make these decisions that affect publicans around the country, without consulting publicans.
Since when should publicans dictate government policy?
Inflation - it's not as if the government just decides "let's have some inflation, lads". Pubs putting prices up contributes to inflation…
Living wage - we're a high-wage economy with a high cost of living. If you don't want to pay your employees properly, you're just a scumbag.
VAT - you don't pay this, your customers do.
Excise - ditto.
Water - businesses pay for water same as they pay for every other service they use. Would he expect to get electricity for free - no - so why water?
The sheer numbers of pubs in small towns was nuts, my local small town had something like a dozen pubs at one time, now there's just four which is more than enough even with the increase in population. Most of the week these are either closed or dead.
People simply aren't going straight after work for pints, that day is gone.
The article says pub hold quiz nights and other events to attract gen z. I think gen z is simply more health conscious they watch Netflix. Play videogames. previous generations went to the pub every night now people go to the gym or just visit a friend.
The amount of pubs is unsustainable.
Pubs are certainly sustainable and people are doing well from them despite the doom mongering about "kids these days"
The Boards wokerati brigade must be all away for the weekend - no one's condemned you as WACIST !!!! yet?
Does this mean the end of the compulsory staged farce whereby every visiting American president has to be sheperded into a carefully chosen pub somewhere for the obligatory "holding a pint of Guinness" photo op?
Ronan Kelly, who did radio documentaries on RTE for a long time and has his own YT channel, stumbled upon a great thing in Longford one time - another old Irish tradition, the rambling house.
If public houses in rural Ireland are expensive to run, maybe this type of thing could see a resurgence. They don't run afoul of the law in the way a shebeen might because they're not run for profit and no drink is sold. People bring drink along and have it there, or leave it behind the bar for others or chip in for a keg.
I don't drink a lot, maybe 3/4 pints on a night out with friends. I'm reluctant to even do that now with the prices, 6 euro for a pint of lager. It's not worth it and I don't like the feeling of being ripped off. They can keep it. I meet my friends now for a coffee during the day as we're all retired and sometimes we meet in each others homes for a few Peronis and a game of cards. Better fun anyway.
To elaborate on
For years now, pubs havn't been getting new customers for a multitude of reasons - mainly the following: young people socialising in different ways (festivals, run clubs, gyms etc), and the drinks they do drink are mainly mixers eg vodka and coke etc.
At same time, due to rising costs they had to increase the price of drink which made drinking the cheaper supermarket stuff more appealing.
Realising these things and not being able to do much about the first, they joined hands with AAI to increase the supermarket stuff to just below pub prices (Via MUP also not realising that AAI want no drinking whatsoever) in the hope that john and mary will come back to the pub to drink.
What they didn't bank on was that john and mary would simply cut back on drink rather then go to the pub, thereby reducing current customers by a significant amount.
This created an issue where by john and mary might miss the pub and be sad its closing down, young 22 year old bob in his run club never gave a shyte about the pub to begin with and doesn't care.
This is all much much worse for rural pubs where population is an issue. Dublin ones can get by just by its sheer population but thats not sustainable long term as culture continues to shift.
Liscensing changes is not a fix neither is continuing to prop up a mostly unviable industry outside of dublin, just because they are community hubs which I don't believe exist anymore.
The local parish, GAA club and pub being the local centre of the community is not the case anymore.
Not a shred of sympathy for them, these are the same **** that lobbied to get MUP introduced so nobody could ever enjoy a drink at home again without getting fleeced. Then get proceed to make the price of a pint extortionate and pull a Pikachu face when trade is suddenly down.
Sink or swim you pricks, you wanted this so deal with it.
Cheers, my point was that the pub was traditionally the social spot and now that has changed. Pubs are economically unfeasible (for the most part heading into the future) and supporting them just so a few aul ones can meet up once a week is not the right thing to do.
Of course you can do those things without a pub or alcohol. The question isn't about how you, personally socialise. It's about the bunch of ways communities socialise.
Maybe you think we have too much community and can afford to cut off some of those ways people do it. But I think community is important- even the methods of socialising that I don't personally use.
I've no use for running clubs but I hope you have a good time.
I'm not sure it "seems like the Irish pub scene will soon be over".
But this is the unsophisticated way these things tend to be discussed. It's not either/or, all or nothing. There are lots of places people can socialise and mill about. I personally have no use for cafes. I go to them 10 times a year for a take away coffee and leave. I also don't know how people make friends at the gym but I take their word for it that they do.
But I have made friends through going to see sport matches of different kinds, sports clubs, pubs, work etc. Just because I don't use a venue doesn't mean I'd be happy to see them disappear.
ThThe village I cone from has one pub and it's as I described. People mill about and chat (not all the time, of course. Most of the time its quiet). It's one of the things that ties the community together. And community is important to me.
people have 2000 friends on Facebook or TikTok but don’t leave their bedroom and don’t have 2 proper friends to talk to if something is wrong
