Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
THE VINTNERS’ FEDERATION of Ireland has hit out at plans by Diageo to put up the price of a pint.
A pint of Guinness as well as Budweiser and Carlsberg is expected to rise by about five cent. Diageo has blamed the increase on rising barley and energy costs.
The VFI has said that it is shocked and disappointed at the news, and says that the “inconceivable” move will put thousands of jobs at risk.
The VFI also highlights Drinks Industry Group of Ireland figures that show that 54,000 jobs are supported by the pub trade in this country, but that the numbers are in decline.
This is a disaster for the hospitality industry and indeed for Irish consumers and tourists at a time when we are all trying to boost consumer confidence, to get people spending and to reinvigorate a trade already on its knees.
Publicans are doing everything within their powers to keep their businesses alive and their staff in jobs and value is essential to this survival.
DIGI figures released in September revealed that the volume of sales had decreased by 8.2 per cent in the first seven months of 2012.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
How come I can buy a pint of Guinness or Bulmers in Ireland and it costs me near €5 then I can go to Liverpool (went to Uni there) and with the added costs of shipping and storage the same drinks are cheaper?
Vat, duty, wage costs are all much lower.
Neil. Both Guinness and Bulmers for the British market are made here.
For all the suckers who fell for that cynical Arthur’s Day gimmick, it’s time for Diageo to recoup the costs incurred. To Martha my arse
Well said. That fake holiday has to be paid for somehow!!! Here’s to Diageo.
Suckers? Gimmick? Lighten up, I had a great day out!
Desperate Dan talks some sense. If he will bring back his chew bars then I’m with him on this one (the black bit aren’t coal)
Those bars are my personal stash ;)
Those bars were the most amazing thing ever! Black crystals were the best!
A 5c increase will threaten jobs in the industry? More like the 10c the Publicans will slap on top of the 5c
I’d have a bit more sympathy for them if they didn’t charge more for a pint of soft drink (with no tax) than they do for a pint of Guinness or Heineken…
No pint in worrying.
Lulz
The variation in the price from one pub to another is about a euro ,so does it make much difference ,if it does drink Murpheys
‘shocking…. inconceivable….disaster’ ….Oh the humanity, won’t someone PLEASE think of children, this is the end of the world and life as we know it!!!!!
Anything that makes people drink less in this country, I’ll welcome with open arms.
Wont be drinking less. Just not drinking in pubs.
Smooth move diageo! I’ll stick to the craft beers thanks
Hope they do the same with cigarettes
In fairness we drink far too much in this country! Most people think drinking 6+ pints most nights out is ok!! When it’s damaging to your physical and mental health, not to mention costly to you and/or society. Of course we all over indulge now and again but we need to stop considering binge drinking as ok/normal.
In fairness we drink far too much in this country! Most people think drinking 6+ pints most nights out is ok!! When it’s damaging to your physical and mental health, not to mention costly to you and/or society. Of course we all over indulge now and again but we need to stop considering binge drinking as ok/normal….
It’ll go up in price for home consumption as well. The grains for making drink are were the cost increase has come from.
Jesus, thats a lot of red thumbs
John Foody,
Agree with you that we drink too much, but this isn’t about that. I doubt Diageo want people to drink less. Perhaps they are trying to sell their other products instead and I’d say they’ve done their cost-benefit analysis.
That’s the most thumb downs I have ever seen on this.
A nation of pathetic turds. The most red thumbs down on the site most of us have ever seen, over a 5c increase in the price of a pint.
This country should be concreted over, the people here are the weakest, most cowardly people in the world.
A pathetic race of cowards nowadays, it wasn’t always the way, but who can doubt it now.
700 red thumbs? Over 5c? Holy molers, I think that just about labours the point. Get over yourselves.
Just because you feel ‘ireland’ has a drinking problem, you feel it is ok that alcohol prices get even higher.. all about you isn’t it?
You should stand in A&E on any given night, you’d soon change your opinion.
The attitude towards alcohol in Ireland is almost worse than the actual problem itself – as is identified by the fact that people feel exercised enough to thumb down over 5c. I stand by my comment – in fact – raise it more. Same for cigarettes. Legalise recreational drugs, make them available on prescription, and tax the hell out of them. Return the funds to the services that are already bursting at the seams.
People are all too quick to protect their interest, but if you removed patients from Irish hospitals who need treatment as a direct consequence of drinking, smoking or taking drugs, you’d be on the road to clearing most of the waiting lists in the country.
@Ken Coz.
Yeah Anti Smokers always join in. Whats smoking got to do with drinking Ken ?
Why do u Anti Smoking lobby always want to increase the price of tobacco ? Why dont you put something helpful and constructive forward which would help people to give up tobacco e.g. Reduce VAT to Zero on Nicotine Substitute products, and all products which help people kick the habit.
Do you drive a car Ken – Put petrol up 100%.
Do you have Children Ken – Do away with Childrens allowance.
Are u a pensioner Ken – Do away with State Pension.
People like you sicken me with your small minded and uncompassionate comments and opinions.
@John Foody. Agree John. The publicans couldnt care less how much you drink. If you’re langered they’ll ask you to leave. They ave got ur money and in the case of most publicans they couln’t give a shit.
Its crazy. When i started drinking in 1995 i could get 5 or 6 pints and 10fags for a 10r. Now ye would be lucky to get 2pints for that.
Youre right Les.
Its a calamity.
Your right but when I was working in a restaurant in 1995 I got £2.50 an hour so I took 4 hours work to get that £10. Minimum wage is now about 9.31 in a restaurant so I think it’s cheaper now ?
The minimum wage is ?8.65 and the price of a pint in most Dublin city pubs is ?5.40, pure rip off. I’ll just stay home and keep having my mates over :-)
I think barmen ( the ones that did it as an apprentice) have a union rate of €19 per hour ??
Agreed. God be good to the days when you could get battered without having to bankrupt yourself. People didn’t drink as much years ago though. There was plenty of Guinness but no shorts, no slamming pints. The price of drink in this country is as outrageous as the amount we drink on a night out. I’m not innocent of this. On a night out I can blast through a lot of the damn stuff.
great idea to increase the price of drink while the pubs are closing every week all over Ireland . am I the onlyone that thinks if you keep charging us more for everything will not be able to buy it ? , am I stupid ? . when is this crazy idea of increasing the pricing of everything going to stop.
Medical insurance, car insurance, home insurance, road tax will fly up again next year and now the sacred pint! The end is nigh
Ask any tillage farmer: Barley is over 20% dearer now than it was this time last year.
It’s hardly a scandal that beer would be a bit dearer too.
Now, you’ll see riots!
So glad they waited until “Arthur’s Day” was over, hang on!!!! Christmas, sweet sufferin’ mother of Jesus!!!! How will I ever afford my Christmas session now?????
Home brew kits will become popular. Bring friends around to sample the latest batch
could have a point there dna30, in the u.k in the 80′s the big brewers (along side the government) kept pushing up the price of a pint, and the number of people, myself included, that started brewing their own beer went through the roof, you could brew 40 pints of stout for less than a tenner ! and if done properly it was good stuff too, Diagio want the best of both worlds, compared to pubs in the u.k they have no outlets of there own like the breweries in the u.k do, so if the I.V.A and its members are ‘upset’ about Diagio putting up it’s prices then the answer is to boycott them, go to another supplier, Murphy’s or Beamish stout, or try supporting one of the local micro brewers, you dont have to buy from Diagio and unlike in the U.K., (where the breweries own the lease on the pubs, and therefore control what you buy and who you buy it from) pub landlords are free to sell whatever beer they wish to sell, a couple of weeks with sales plummeting would soon change Diagios mindset.
your right Eric and dna30 brew your own and i am boycotting all diageo products ,Arthur’s day what a joke if you had ever read “The search for god and Guinness”you would know that Arthur would be turning in his grave at the mere thought of this cynical publicity stunt and at a time when we are all on our knees they want to increase profits drank my last Guinness!!
A pub closed in the town I live in recently. It wont be the last. Pubs in rural Ireland are in terminal decline, cost is only one factor. A trip to a rural pub on any night other than Saturday can be a demoralising experience.
I love a good pale ale..the amount of great ales you can buy in my local offy and a very reasonable price is the main reason, i don’t go to a pub very often.
As long as the price of the pint of Murphy’s stays the same…all is good.
Hobgoblin i found to be a nice red ale lately, makes a nice refreshing change from stout or lager too. We are surrounded by lovely micro brewery drafts and bottles of all decriptions, local and foreign, and personally its a real shame so many people solely Heineken and the other nasty beers laced with chemicals and supporting the likes of greedy Diageo, when there is a world of choice there to be discovered
just drink Murphy’s hino and bulmers and let guinness the greedy fu***rs go f**k themselves.
Beamish is 50c cheaper and tastes similar to Guinness.
Heineken and Bulmers will increase in price next week.
They let Diageo take all the grief and then they move
Don’t be naive, its a business they are all runing not a charity
Agreed @PJBrowne. I worked in a very busy bar in Tralee and back in the ’80s when Guinness owned Harp the landlady stopped serving it after a price increase (awful stuff anyway). She called Guinness to remove their taps and pipes from the premises to no avail. After a few weeks, frustrated she rang for the last time and told them that “if nobody comes to collect your equipment, you’ll find it on the street tomorrow morning” . sure enough, two hours later a very flustered Rep arrives with two free kegs and a pricing arrangement practically begging for the harp to be put back on sale. That’s how you do business!
Sadly the Heineken brewery historically follow suit about a week after every Diago increase. Many pubs have taken the hit on the last couple of 5 cent hikes but with running cost staying the same it could be hard to carry it this time.
yes sure ‘publicans are doing everything in their powers to keep the business alive’ so I was charged €5.50 for a pint of rock shandy yesterday when i stopped in to the local pub to catch the game when driving home..€5.50 , for soft drinks , has to be incredible mark up and theres not THAT much tax compared to pints of beers on soft drinks- it’s the complete rip off by publicans who if they were really doing ‘everything in their power’ would reduce some the prices where they can to increase business….it s nonsense and the VFI spinning this ‘everything in their power crap , how about a bit less of the rip off Ireland stuff where you have room to move…
Agreed dave, the pubs rip their customers off for minerals. A bigger scandal is what they charge for 33 cl bottles of beer. The vfi should commit not to increase the price at the pumps any more than 5c. That might be a worthy press release.
worked in well over 18 public houses during my college days about 5 years ago and they’d tell you everything about the business except how much they paid per keg. cute foxes
Have you any idea of the overhead costs involved in running a pub? €5.50 isn’t just for your beverage. It also covers the exorbitant Sky subscription cost the publican is paying for the pleasure of your match viewing. I do agree that soft drinks are overpriced though, and there should be a reintroduction of the designated driver freebie soft drink for weekend nights or something similar.
yep i have a reasonable understanding of business costs and I similarly know when I am being completely ripped of , and 5.50 for a pint of soft drink is a complete rip off , you can be sure the sky fees are a red herring as although they are higher than home subs they also attract a lot of customers and wouldn’t be used by pubs at all if they didn’t ,( as it happens the game was on RTE 2 and I could have easily just gone straight home to watch )The pub offering is not increased with the rip off pricing of soft drinks and at 5.50 for a rock shandy they are actually making a far better profit margin on that than a pint of alcohol…the main point here was the article was saying they are doing everything in their power to stay in business which is horse shite at these prices.
There is never a queue at my fridge and it’s always happy hour there. This latest plan to raise the price of a pint will see more people drinking at home. More pubs will close and that’s a simple fact. I’m amazed that there are any pubs left
When sales decline, don’t you reduce the price? Or has everything changed since I did first year economics?!
Why is nobody blaming Enda?
My local does carling on draught now for €3.30 a pint,lovely pint aswell,also does Bavaria for the same price,fair play to the owner seen an opening for good value beer,flying off the shelves now
I remember back in the good ole days (the early 90s), when Carling and Harp were the default lagers in most boozers before Heineken and Bud took control. Carling was an awful drink, it probably still is. Anyways, it’s good to see publicans wising up and offering customers reasonably priced pints.
Fosters & Tuborg 3 euro in my local. Sells well too.
Take note publicans. This is the type of choice we are after.
I think if you sell more at a cheaper price instead of raising prices and selling less at a more expensive price, you are way better off .. People are pricing themselves out of customers .
I bet Arthur who did so much for the poor of Dublin is turning in his grave.
The same Arthur Guinness that was a unionist? mad hero worship forgetting the fact that he supported colonialism in this country and he was very much allied with the English elite and also he directly opposed any movements for independence.
His son also called Arthur Guinness was much much worse and he opposed Daniel O’Connell, Arthur voted against any attempts to repeal the act of union.
Then there is Arthur’s son Benjamin Guinness, who is worse yet again. Who said after being elected Lord Mayor of Dublin of the nationalists:
“Those wicked and worthless adventurers who would not only deprive our country of the advantages which, as a part of the British Empire, we enjoy, but who would overturn all the social arrangements of society.”
Representatives of the Guinness family spoke to the House of Commons in 1916 to recommend the execution of the 1916 rebels. So in short they are people we shouldn’t be celebrating at all.
…But lets all forget about that so some sheep have a usable excuse to go on the piss and give his company massive profits and fall for their daft PR campaigns!
read a book not propaganda so what he was a protestant and half his family were in the church and banking you will always have black sheep in any family in any generation so what most of it is history except for the idiot brit bashers.The whole of Europe is guilty of colonial oppression to the third world we were just unlucky enough to be next door to the brits do you think if we were next door to the Spanish French or the rest it would have been different ?and Arthur’s day was invented by a multi national for profit read “the search for god and Guinness” probably more propaganda but everyone is entitled to their own opinion even you
I visited Arthur’s grave. (not on purpose) he’s buried up near Celbridge.
The Irish drinker should be supporting your local craft brewer and move away from the corporate machine that is diageo.
Agreed. Pubs should make more of a focus on this area where there is real potential to creat local employment.
They need to reduce the price of drinks in pubs and increase the price of drinks in off licences! Get people back out and socialising and not driven to their couches if they fancied a drink! Would also help reduce underage drinking SLIGHTLY!
In my own personal opinion anyway
You are totally correct. Big suppliers have given up on the pubs to focus on shifting large volume thru off-sales. Profit is the game and they will go to where that can be delivered most efficiently. Sad for the on-trade and not good for controlling consumption among under age.
@GRINDER
Profit is not the same at all. The pub trade returns a significantly higher margin for all beer/cider producers.
There is no price competition in the pub-trade – it is an oligopolistic supply chain supported by the retailers.
No imported equivalent, and significant scale economies add to it.
None of that exists in the off-trade
Apols GRINDER, misread your comment ‘game’ not ‘same’
A 5c increase would not affect sales. People would complain for sure but no self respecting Guinness drinker will switch to Beamish/Murphy’s for the sake of 5c.
Never go to the pub anymore, used to go every weekend, even for one or two before dinner. Why would I pay @€5.50/6 for a glass/quarter bottle of red wine when I can buy a full bottle of reasonable stuff for the price of two in the pub..oh and then theres the problem of getting home! Nah doesn’t make economic sense in these hard times.
i heard you buy by the gallon not the bottle
Plus .. Keeps drunk drivers off the streets
haven’t been out in month drinking at home is great its cheaper even if you have kids you can still have a drink when they are in bed and not have to pay for a baby sitter or taxi home, plus you can listen to and watch what you want, instead of the usual crap on the T.V. in the pub i.e. soccer very few pubs doing live music just a shite dj and music you can even shout over.
Diageo Board room: Sales are down, which means less money coming in, what should we do? Just charge people more and hope that this will encourage more people buy our products. BINGO!!!!
Thats pretty much government logic
Niall I heard you can sink quite a few after football on a Thursday evening, it’s the thirst after all that footie, from the middle aged team!!! Want to watch the knees, hips and heart.
Why dont more pubs break from the cartel of Diagio and Heineken, They should start stocking more micro brewery beers and other cheaper beers like Tennants, Bavaria and any beer not sourced through the two main breweries.
Put an extra euro on every pint. Sell 1.4 million pints. Pay off Trappatoni. Get new manager. Ireland winning. Ireland drinking. Recession over. Sorted.
Where’s Richard Lennon’s input. I miss that guy. All the customers in the pub do.
Home brewing is the solution.
why dont they cut out wasting money on adverts n arthurs day. Guinness has a huge name already. it would be able to reduce price r give customers/pubs few kegs to give out free to customers. i work in a pub n couldn’t tell you last time we got anything off diageo/heineken etc. even getting beer mats is getting hard.
Robbie depends on the rep in my experience. Worked in a few bars in Dublin and Kerry. Guinness did a few good promos in Dublin in my time. Nothing in Munster worthy of talking about. Murphy’s meanwhile go out of their way down here. Or did. Left the bar trade a few years back but that was how it was then.
Good opportunity for bars to start stocking beer from the great small breweries popping up around the country. Even if the small scale brewing would mean a pint is a little more expensive the money would be staying local.
You’d be getting a much better pint too!
Feck that…ill brew my own in the shed when i get a kit….invite all my friends over….some tunes and have a laugh..
how about they reduce their greed and reduce the profit margin instead of passing the cost onto the end customer.
As pub sales are falling anyway, Diageo obviously don’t care about the opinion of the VFI. Long term prognosis for the pub trade in Ireland wrt draught pint sales is not good so they are banking on higher margins on lower sales volumes. Their global markets (outside Ireland) are increasing year on year so that’s now their focus.
5 cent wouldn’t make an impact .
Add on extra vat + round the price up to the nearest 5c.
5 cents on a pint. A night out will cost me the total of an extra 25 cents. My mortgage is 1100 euro a month. It’s only 5 cents. This is a non story…
Could the vintners take the 5c from their end? Unlikely
How many of us would step over 5c on the ground and not bother to pick it up?!! Honestly…a 5c increase isn’t a devastating or “shocking” increase. Would we even complain about the ever changing price of drink in our local supermarket? Sure even petrol has gone up by considerably more over the past few months and it hasn’t produced any protest…would a 5c increase honestly prevent the sale of drink? I sure won’t stop buying Carlsberg even if it went up by 20c!! I like a quiet drink at home…and no increase will prevent that! :)
just flicked through #diageo and see that 2 months ago they blowing their trumpet with a 32% profit( 3.odd million) . why that not cover some off they rise in costs, not on the people who are struggling and already makeing them enough money
Fine, make petrol cheaper by those 5 cent
I blame the troika, Sean Quinn and Fianna Fail. Not to mention Mick Wallace. Rabble Rabble
If the VFI didn’t call everything a “disaster”, it might be more possible to take them seriously once in a while.
How many hundreds of millions did Diageo net last year? surely they aren’t making the argument that they’re costs are higher than they’re profits? its all the one, pubs will always charge what ever they want for a pint anyway depending on how much business they’re doing.
Very bad timing by Diageo. They spend millions enticing people out of their homes to celebrate arthur’s day and then announce a price hike on most of their products to send people back to their homes. Silly
I wonder if this OUTRAGE from the publicans means that they will only pass on the actual cost increase rather then several multiples of it, like in the boom.
As said by others, if the punters have a problem they can drink something else.
SHOCK! Vintners Association does not understand Price Elasticity of Demand of beer. Load of aul’ bollocks.
The Rehab clinics are going to be over flowing next year
The corporate machine rages on…..the pint of “plain” will soon be as rare as hens’ teeth !
Pints of Guinness in my local are only 3.30…
and larger’s 3.30 to!
no rip off here…only you silly lot in Dublin paying stupid prices!
doesn’t matter if you buy from a off licence or pub, all of it comes from the same source, so they get you on matter what you do. People should start brewing there own, even mass produce it and sell it.
I’m brewing right now.
If the publicans really consider themselves professional, let Diageo off, next time they ring in on a Tuesday for their order, “Emmm, you’re grand there, in fact, I’m grand for the next month” Lob on the craft beers, which I have been sampling lately. And I used to only drink the sauce all the time. I can’t be the only one.
Great. Push the price up. It will help accelerate pub owners adoption of great new homegrown produce.
Would be great if there was lower taxation for the local microbrewers where their output remains below a certain level. Ales are enjoyed better in moderation and are not brewed based around the goal of minimum flavour in pursuit of maximum “skullibilty”.
By five cent?
Diagio are loosing interest in the beer market very quickly. Far more money in the spirits market, especially luxury spirits, hence opening several new distillarys in Scotland this year. Wouldn’t be surprised if Guinness an smithwicks fou d themselves for sale soon.
have your say