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The plight of rural pubs in Ireland is well documented – and easy to spot. Almost 1,000 premises have closed over the space of five years. When addressing this issue, Ireland’s elected representatives fall between two stools – they must balance the need for sensible drinking while supporting these local businesses. TheJournal.ie spoke to some of those politicians who can be – or have previously been – found behind the bar. They’ve shared their experiences of running bars, and what can be done to help those struggling.
Any rural Irish pub that is only selling pints will be closed in five years.
IT’S A STARK warning, but the reality for many communities around Ireland. Their local pub, once the heartbeat of the area, is barely clinging on as a viable business.
Ciaran Cannon, TD for Galway East and former leader of the Progressive Democrats, is on the frontline of this. He and his wife run The Gate Lodge, a pub in the centre of Athenry.
He described the past decade as “exceptionally difficult”, a trend that started gradually in the mid-2000s, was exasperated by the recession, but is now starting to reverse.
That reversal hasn’t been solely by a restoration of the normal trade though, he said:
It’s a big challenge. We’re starting to offer food and have opened a theatre a couple of nights, but it’s a challenge when you only have three members of staff.
Cannon says he used a derelict function room at the back of the pub – once the Mecca for locals at a time when a trip to the local big town and into a club was a foreign concept – to diversify, running events including gigs and pizza nights.
It’s giving people another reason to come and visit the pub, and it’s working well. The community have been very supportive.
Cannon’s pub has been around for some time, but another politician hopped dove head-first into this risky business just as the first glimmer of recovery was starting to be seen.
Terry Leyden is a Fianna Fáil Senator known for owning a replica Dáil bar.
The opening of Castlecoote Lodge in County Roscommon was mired in controversy when Leyden posted invitations to members of the Oireachtas using official envelopes, but has since shaken that off.
It’s important to note that Leyden isn’t the licensee – his wife Mary handles that side of things – but the Senator helps manage this pub.
“It’s building up a nice steady trade,” Leyden said, “It’s going grand so far.”
He has focused on diversification – Castlecoote Lodge runs trad nights, darts tournaments, hosts local hunts, and has land surrounding if they ever wanted to run a larger gathering, with nearby accommodation – and then marketing this widely.
“Basically, your locals are your number one priority,” he explained, “After that you add to it by having events.”
Leyden believes there is one important, key element to any pub:
If you have quality Guinness, you will do well.
Both Cannon and Leydon’s stories are quite positive, but can skim past the reality facing rural Ireland. Pubs closing have caused a rot at the very core of communities across the country. They are among numerous boarded-up shopfronts on main streets in villages and towns. Recently, Brosna in Kerry saw its last shop close its doors for the final time.
This financial crisis saw people’s pockets a lot less full, fewer jobs, and young adults much more eager to emigrate, bringing back memories of the 1980s. One TD said:
That has really turned the heart of rural Ireland.
Tom Fleming is one of the Dáil’s best known publicans, an Independent for Kerry South since 2011, and before that a Fianna Fáil councillor on-and-off since 1980
After taking up his seat in Leinster House, Fleming’s Bar in Scartaglin village was leased. Before this, he witnessed first-hand what was happening in his community.
“People are the lifeblood of any community,” Fleming said, “The reality is you have a lost an entire generation. Some of it is for lifestyle, some of it is forced emigration, people who had no choice but to leave their native areas and migrate to big cities.”
“We have certainly lost a vital element. We need to regenerate our rural areas.”
This is obviously going to affect footfall in pubs, but social changes are also afoot:
The old socialising element of the pub has been diluted, and it is certainly not in the traditional style when people came in for a conservation and to maybe watch a bit of TV. By and large, it was very much a social gathering with a lot of interaction between people, but I see that diminishing.
The recession wasn’t the first big challenge for the rural Irish pub though. Difficult to label it an issue or problem, stricter drink driving laws have noticeably impacted business for rural publicans.
Obviously a force for good, it has been enforced for everyone’s safety and something that publicans have simply had to work with since the mid-2000s.
When the Government clamped down on drink-driving, and clamped down hard, rural drivers were no longer able to tip home from their local pub late at night after having a few drinks.
Some have suggested that people in this situation should be given some kind of exemption, but few will argue against having safer roads.
Rural publicans have been hit harder than those in the city, where taxis and public transport is abound.
An initiative was launched at the end of 2013 to address this. The local area hackney service is intended to target transport deficits that would not otherwise be addressed in rural areas – but it isn’t going well, to say the least, one former publican has found.
Fine Gael’s Brendan Griffin, who gave up a brief career behind the bar (sometimes spent writing books) when he was elected in 2011, discovered just how poorly through a parliamentary question in February. At that time, a total of 42 applications were made nationwide for local area hackney licenses – but just seven were granted.
“This seems to be something we need to tweak,” he said.
It’s either not being communicated, or not feasible to do.
This scheme was meant to be the be-all-and-end-all for the problem, but publicans are still calling for more help.
Cannon encountered a similar issue. He told the Dáil:
“I can only speak from my experience of working with three distinct communities and three individuals wishing to serve those communities. They satisfied all of these criteria. Their application was accompanied by a letter from a community group that advocates on behalf of the community and works to address the needs of the rural community.
“They were also accompanied by a forensic analysis of the public transport needs carried out by the local authority and signed by a very senior figure within the local authority management.”
They satisfied all of those criteria, yet were refused. I can only speak from the experience of working with these individuals. They were exceptionally disappointed. The communities they were willing to serve were equally disappointed.
Minister Michael Ring conceded that there were “teething problems”, and has said the NTA will review the scheme.
On paper, this scheme is valid: get people to the pub, they have their few sensible drinks with friends, and then head home.
The reality is that drinking in Ireland is not like this. Pubs are expensive. It’s far easier to get six cans of Dutch Gold for under a tenner, invite a few people over, and spend the evening doing that.
Do the same thing in a pub, and you could be pushing for a bill of €40.
The availability of cheap alcohol is not only keeping us away from pubs, alcohol awareness groups say its driving up our intake of booze.
Enter minimum pricing – and another line to skate for publicans-cum-politicians.
The Government confirmed earlier this year that this system will be introduced, where there will be a minimum price for a unit of alcohol sold in off licenses.
The new legislation will include provisions to prevent the sale of very cheap alcohol, making it illegal to sell or advertise alcohol at a price below the limit.
Minister for Health Leo Varadkar said at the time:
It will obviously need to be sufficiently high to eliminate very cheap alcohol which really drives binge drinking, but not so high that it affects most consumers.
This is something that, needless to say, many publicans find appealing. Bring the cost of a can up, and the previously expensive cost of a pint seems more reasonable. Many also argue that drinking in a pub is less conducive to binge drinking.
“The traditional Irish pub has been run in a reasonably orderly fashion,” Tom Fleming argued.
“It should be adequately supervised and there’s a standard of compliance. At a house party you can have spirits being drank without measure and there can be a high mood, and it can out of hand. That’s the reality of it.”
However, Griffin notes that it can be hard to tell someone they have had one too many:
It’s hard to call it. You have to know the customer, and if you don’t serve a regular, they may never come back.
“If you don’t know the customer it’s not always that easy to tell if they’re drunk. You might only have five seconds, before which they composed themselves. You see them later and they’re falling about the place.”
While most publicans nodded towards a level of agreement with minimum pricing, Ciaran Cannon is staunchly against it, calling it a “red herring”:
“I think it’s an unfair state intervention in a free market, and there is little evidence globally to show that it is going to affect alcohol consumption.”
“Ultimately, at the end of the day, I’m a liberal. I don’t feel like trying to force people down a particular ideology.”
“Publicans need to go out and be innovative.”
Wrapping up the thoughts of his Leinster House colleagues on all the issues facing the rural pub, Brendan Griffin summed up their future with one sentence:
The days of having nothing behind the bar except cheese and onion crisps, and maybe a pink Snack, are over.
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I booked with them for a family holiday last may and the service was great. I got an email last Friday with a sale notice and was going to book again, but there were no flights listed for next year. Thank god I didn’t.
Chances are they knew what was about to happen, and still allowed sale emails to go out to customers… surely that’s illegal!
Yeah got that too “up to 60% off” on Friday in my inbox.. I hope no one got stiffed with that one.
Only on Wednesday night last week were we looking for somewhere for October, decided we’d book a deal we saw for Portugal and we’d pay for it at the end of the month. So lucky but they would have taken payment for the holiday had we had it at the time, surely they must have known at that stage?
Why not just call visa and claim your money back?
I went onto aer lingus earlier, my flights are confirmed, called the hotel, my hotel booking is not. Called ulster bank (visa debit) and asked for a chargeback on the hotel reservation. filled out the form online, they said it should be fine and will get back to me
@iamahorse, where did you find the form online? I have been on to them via phone, twitter and called to my branch in person. Still no form. Getting antsy.
It is illegal for any company to continue to trade when they are knowingly insolvent. ..The Directors are liable under the Companies Act and can face criminal charges. It is a long drawn out process and I cannot think of anyone doing time for such an offence in this country
Why people don’t book flights and hotels themselves with all the websites out there il never know. Far too risky booking through travel agents.
Convenience
To be honest, for me, it worked out cheaper. This wasn’t a travel agent I went to, it was the website itself, so I did the research and it came back about 200 euro less than booking everything seperately myself. That was including transfers and all that extra stuff. Plus there was a rep on site and kids clubs etc. (not that we used them), So for a quick family vacation, this would be the way to go.
Nah, flight, hotel, taxi, job done. No worries, no bus tour of the south of Spain
Guru you’re slagging people for being lazy, see you wont even learn how to code!
Excuse me Mumpsimus, travel agents offer protection in incidences like this. My own company for example, doesn’t pay for accommodation until the client has travelled, thus protecting the customers money completely. I have liased directly with hotels and reprotected all my clients holidays and no one is out of pocket. So don’t blame “travel agents” for this. Low-cost Holidays is a huge company with many branches in accommodation only, flights, packages, they are at fault, not the general travel agencies, many of whom are also suffering the fall out from this.
If you book it yourself you won’t have the protections you would if you had booked through a travel agent.
That’s what travel insurance in for.
If you paid by credit card you can get your money back up to 60 days after the transaction. Charge back department. They might try fob you off but persist, they are obliged by law to refund for goods or services not received. They might try to get you you are not entitled to claim as the agency are bonded but register the claim and then you are covered for any outstanding amount no matter how long the claim takes to process.
Going away next month and had to pay hotel again but Royal Bank of Scotland said they will refund me. Let’s wait and see!
Just as well I booked with clickandgo !!
I heard they are next to go!
There are a lot of people out there who don’t mind paying a substantial extra sum of money to have someone else do the organising and worrying for them, and while some know the extra costs involved others are blissfully unaware of how much they could save by doing the trawling themselves but others are equally unaware of how much difference there is between one company and another. LCH were never at the races in the price war ! No intention of sharing my bag of tricks here as I am selfish beyond repentance, but there’s a lotta eejits out there too ! To each his/her own ! There were a lot of worried accommodation owners where I was last week because of the low value of sterling and the fact that it makes accommodation more expensive for people travelling on pounds or companies buying with a strong Sterling , but I assume the season’s requirements were bought forward ? Or maybe not. I would hate to tell you how much I paid as against how much I was quoted for a “package” … being the high season ya know… fair enough, if you have to go at a certain time, no flexibility, kids off school, and you must have THAT Gaff, well it is the seller’s market ! So sorry for those who get caught up in the mire of the back office finances of these big companies and I hope they are successful in getting a refund or an alternative holiday.
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