Irish publicans on the bar trade: "The show is basically over"

RTÉ News​

2 days ago

As nightclub numbers are dwindling, and Gen Z pivots away from booze, we ask publications how the Irish pub is doing in 2025. Kate Demolder writes.
Ireland's pubs are closing, so say publicans and industry experts who have watched the decline in recent years.
Once a bona fide third space, the Irish pub – a venue for celebration, commiseration and kinship [whether you're drinking or not] – is hitting breaking point, according to publicans. And the reasons for this are plenty.
First up is price; in a time when drinks can leave you without change from a €10 note, the desire to have a tipple can wane.
Second, they say, is education; a country known for its affiliation with alcohol, the average Irish person has seen the ravages of addiction first-hand, meaning the process of indulging in a night of drinking may have lost its initial appeal.
Third is a change in consumer behaviour; one can't browse the internet these days without seeing another article about how Gen Z don't drink, instead choosing to spend time at gym classes and running clubs.
"I have four kids aged between 22 and 30 and they're all gym bunnies," John Byrne, owner of The Lark Inn on Meath Street, says.
"You see the younger generation in the pub maybe once a week for a match or a party, but you also might go a couple of months without seeing them. They don't see the pub as a way of socialising. And for those trying to save for a mortgage, forget about it."
Byrne has worked on Meath Street for 35 years, often serving generations of the same family. Though tourists coming from the Guinness Storehouse bolster sales, he remains loyal to his locals. That said, he's had to pivot to innovative tactics to tempt young people in.
"Quiz nights, bingo nights… different things to try give them a reason." He also refuses to raise his prices in an attempt to stand by his clientele. "Price is a massive thing," he says. "We charge €5 for a pint of Guinness and €5.50 for lager. Just last week, I was in town with my wife, and we paid double that.
"People have a pop at me, saying you won't be making money charging those prices, but we're just trying to give people a reason to come out. It's a struggle, but once we're able to pay our bills and wages and have a little bit leftover, then we'll keep doing what we're doing."
For Colm Redmond, of Johnny O'Loughlin's pub at The Zetland Country House Hotel in Connemara, the case is much the same. Redmond regularly makes headlines for his €4.50 pint of Guinness. "We're not trying to make money, we're just trying to keep customers," he says.
Redmond is positive that business never picked up post-COVID. "A huge amount of people drink at home, which I genuinely believe is terrible for their mental health. The pub was never just about the booze, it was about teas and coffees and chats – and an awful lot of people are missing that."
Back in March, French lawmakers overwhelmingly backed a bill making it easier to open bars in villages, a move aimed at reviving social lives in rural communities. France had just seen a sharp fall from about 200,000 bars and cafés serving alcohol in the 1960s to some 36,000 by 2015. Most of the closures were in rural areas, and echo the current situation in Ireland.
According to a Drinks Industry Group of Ireland (DIGI) study, some 114 pubs on average have closed across the country every year of the last 18. The study, conducted in August 2024, claims that 2,054 pubs have ceased trading in Ireland since 2005, a reduction of 24%.
Every one of the 26 counties in the Republic has seen the number of pubs in it decrease over the last two years, with closure rates highest in more rural counties.
CEO of the Vintner's Federation of Ireland, Pat Crotty, who himself is a former publican, needs just a few words to convey why publicans are shutting their doors. "It's very difficult," he says of running an Irish pub today. "The net position for the publican outside of an urban area is that he's dying slowly."
Even for pubs relying on tourists, the CSO has shown that tourist numbers are down at a time when they should be up." Crotty insists that publicans' hands are tied by way of legal and financial obligations, and that very few can go on at the rate they're currently going.
"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.
"And to make matters worse, publicans submit their forms with all the details of their financials, so the guys making the decisions know whether or not they can afford it. And in a lot of cases, they can't. Which is why pubs are opening on fewer days, the service is getting worse, and so many are closing."
Echoing this is Redmond: "Tapas bars are Spain at its best, and that's because anyone can go there and not have to spend too much to have a great meal and a glass of wine or whatever. Irish hospitality spots have to spend €30,000-€40,000 [on a kitchen] to sell a rasher. Those kinds of prices force restaurants to charge high prices, which means people can't go."
The story of the Irish pub is one that is riddled with archaic and uncomfortable regulations. A prior example was the "Holy Hour," a practice introduced in the 1920s which dictated that all pubs be closed for an hour on Sundays, usually between 2pm and 4pm, in an attempt to curtail afternoon drinking by the workforce.
Most pubs at the time simply shuttered their doors and continued to serve patrons inside. Realising this, the stipulation was dropped in 1999. The following year, a new requirement was listed. One that insisted meals be served to patrons of any establishment where alcohol was sold.
The rule was dubbed the Intoxicating Liquor Act 2000, and regularly saw vats of chicken curry or chicken and chips carted around nightclubs and late licensed pubs as the music was stopped in an attempt to get people to eat. Most didn't, but it didn't matter. Some pubs simply placed a meal beside the pub's hatch to ward off Gardaí in case they came knocking.
"Back then, gardaí would have looked in the door to see everyone was either being compliant or gone home," Crotty says. "Today, if they even looked, there would be nobody there."
A 2024 benchmarking survey by the VFI found that 36% of pub turnover is currently consumed by labour costs alone, and that figure will increase to over 40% with the introduction of the Living Wage.
The same survey found that 37% of publicans are considering retirement within the next two years, and 84% report that no family member wishes to inherit the pub.
The pub's pivot in society from the main social setting to one of several might be responsible for this, so says Dr Perry Share, head of student success at Atlantic Technological University in Sligo and co-editor of the upcoming book The Irish Pub: Invention and Reinvention.
There was no particular point when this shift happened, he says, but a number of different contemporary factors have resulted in a gradual pivot on a rolling basis from pub culture.
"Drink driving legislation, the smoking ban, the rise in cafés, how people's houses are now invested in meaning that pubs no longer feel as necessary, bypasses, motorways, people buying better cars so they don't need to stop on long trips… they're all responsible," he says.
"And that's the same across Europe. It's also not pub-specific. Places like hardware shops, banks, newsagents, post offices and a whole range of other businesses have been reduced in recent years to make way for consolidation.
"Since the start of this century, I've noticed a drop from 13 pubs in my local town to four. And for the ones that remain, the owners are retiring and they're either going to be left empty or turned into residential spaces."
Dr Share says that the difficulty in running a pub is also exacerbated by capital-rich groups which run multiple chains and locations at once.
"It's hard to compete without being a niche development like, say, Fidelity in Smithfield, or having the backing of international capital. That said, while I don't think the Irish pub is going to disappear, I do know that certain types are disappearing all the time. The roadside pub being a perfect example."
Despite this, Ireland still ranks third in the world for the number of pubs per capita, as per a survey by the Health Research Board. (The country listed with the highest number of pubs per capita is Slovakia - officially the Slovak Republic - while the second is Hungary.)
However, figures collated by the blog Every Pub In Dublin show a stark reality. Just 30 new drinking holes – including replacement openings, rebrands and franchised developments like Pitch on Nassau Street – opened in 2024.
Only two, however, are listed as "normal" pub openings: Old Fashioned Sams on Montague Street and Porter's on Camden Street. What does this mean?
"An overreliance on tourism and international capital," Dr Share is certain. Could this be the decline of pub culture as we know it? "It's possible," Crotty says. "I hope not, but it is."
And finally, when asked what he might say to someone who was enthusiastic to start up a pub, Redmond sighed before replying: "You're crazy. There's no future in the bar trade in rural Ireland unless things change dramatically. The show is basically over."
Nobody's under any illusions about the future. In Dublin, Connemara or a roadside in Clare, the Irish pub is being put on the back burner. The question remains, however, where do we go now for our third space?
With nightclubs and pubs closing, and late-night cafés practically non-existent, the only hope for the future of nightlife in Ireland is one that centres on systemic and legislative change.
The ideas are there, and the will is too. The only thing that won't be? According to Crotty: "Pubs, if nothing changes from here on out."