New Business openings and closures around you?

Plus further increases in energy costs and a probable rise in the minimum wage from January. Don't know how many businesses are coping.

Slim Chickens to open in Dundrum.

Yet another chicken restaurant.

The people behind Dope Tapas in Dun Laoghaire finally came to their senses and renamed it Cala. They've also dropped the tapas menu (which was extremely limited) for a more traditional menu. Still no veggie options though 😒

Agree. And lots of other contributory factors - people are a lot more health / fitness conscious and drink less

Some have swapped a weekend treat of a couple of pints for a fancy coffee and a pastry (which can cost nearly the same!)

Its a combination of minimum unit pricing and duties and taxes.

And its fine for places like Dalkey who have a wealthy catchment area that can drink and eat out frequently, and summon a Taxi home without a second thought.

Again, alcohol duties haven't increases since 2013, well over a decade ago. So how exactly are they driving people out of the pubs in 2025?

And minimum unit pricing was brought in, and lobbied for by the LVI, specifically to push people into pubs. It doesn't impact any alcohol sold in a pub at all, it increases the price of alcohol sold in supermarkets - making them a less attractive option compared to a pub.

Thats not what the LVI, or individual publicans, said about the measure when they lobbied for it. They said it would get people drinking in pubs again, instead of drinking at home, because the price differential would narrow. And that its "safer" and "better for the community" to have people drinking in pubs instead, as their moral reasoning (definitely not profit..).

Their stance makes far more logical sense than yours that people's overall household budgets suffer so much from the minor increase from MUP that they can no longer afford to go out for a pint or two.

The fairly obvious statistical facts are that Ireland had far more pubs than it needed for our increasingly health conscious population, and a huge number of the pubs are just very badly run as businesses. The idea that its all the government's fault somehow is just a cop-out.

The town I'm from originally down the country had 15 pubs for a population of 2000 people in the 1990s for example. It now has 3. A closure rate of 80% might sound bad, but 15 pubs was always going to be unsustainable for a population of that size without very large numbers of alcoholics being present spending far too much of their income on booze.

A nail bar is exactly whats needed. When i get my nails done i like to get each nail done in a different nail bar

And a Turkish Barber

You couldn't go swimming before getting your nails done. Peasant.

Assuming a business actively manages their utilities, cost is up about 35% (my current rate is 26.3c including ALL charges - electricity is 15.13c and the carrier/transmission cost is 11.28c. That's the September figure.

Insurance costs have actually come down for most businesses. Mine are down about 15% for public liability, interruption, theft etc. Building insurance is up because the rebuild costs are higher.

Wages are certainly an issue and when you add prsi, holiday and bank holiday, a min wage staff costs about €17.50 an hour.

So it's not the gloom and doom some "interested" parties will throw about