Southern Pubs

[Jonah]

I thought Dundalk was in the North East?

[thewobbler]

Smoking ban has fcuk all to with it. There was plenty of people in the smoking areas when times were good.

You can only arrive at this conclusion is you are anti smoking.

The price of drinking at home has always been cheaper than going to the pub. But for a smoker, the value gained  from being able to stink out another building, having ashtrays emptied and being in one of the few arenas where smokers weren't pariahs, made the premium worthwhile. So a €3 pint was better value than a €1.50 tin, even though it cost twice as much.

With smokers leaving pubs, who replaced them? I remember at the time that anti-smokers declared they'd now visit pubs with greater frequency, the truth is this: if you've grown up spending €50 in a pub every week, you think nothing of it. If you've never done it, or not in a long time, you can think of umpteen better ways to spend that money. You can't coerce non pub goers into being pub regulars. That's why the smoking ban has had such an impact.

[Hardy]

I think the smoking factor is minuscule compared to the drink-driving factor and the price factor.

The effect of pricing is self-evident and is just the outcome of basic economics. My own opinion is that the pub culture is so basic to our society that the government should take positive action to protect it. For instance, halve the duty on pub sales and double it on off-license sales. Can you imagine the French government standing idly by while the café culture disappeared or, worse, actively accelerating its demise?

Apart from anything else, there's a social cost. Drinking in the pub is primarily a social activity - for the majority, anyway. Drinking at home, especially alone, is the opposite and is not healthy.

The drink-driving effect is huge, as well. Before the major reductions in allowable blood alcohol level, the increased penalties and the improved enforcement, I'd guess that AT LEAST 50% of pub clientele, outside the major cities, came in cars. They can't do that anymore and people haven't embraced the alternatives, such as car-pooling, taxi use etc.

There's an argument that the lives saved (if any) by the reduction in allowable blood-alcohol content to effectively zero are more than balanced by those lost or ruined by the removal of the social outlet of the pub. I don't know if it's a valid argument, but it doesn't matter because it wouldn't even be allowed on today's social agenda.

Whatever about that, I'd say there's room here too for effective government action to encourage car pooling or to subsidise communal pub transport schemes. It may seem laughable that the government should be encouraging people to go to pubs and I take the point about how the publicans rode us for generations. But it makes some sense socially, culturally and economically, especially if the alternative is not reduced alcohol consumption, but the opposite and in uncontrolled conditions.

[thebigfella]

Smoking ban has fcuk all to with it. There was plenty of people in the smoking areas when times were good.

You can only arrive at this conclusion is you are anti smoking.

The price of drinking at home has always been cheaper than going to the pub. But for a smoker, the value gained  from being able to stink out another building, having ashtrays emptied and being in one of the few arenas where smokers weren't pariahs, made the premium worthwhile. So a €3 pint was better value than a €1.50 tin, even though it cost twice as much.

With smokers leaving pubs, who replaced them? I remember at the time that anti-smokers declared they'd now visit pubs with greater frequency, the truth is this: if you've grown up spending €50 in a pub every week, you think nothing of it. If you've never done it, or not in a long time, you can think of umpteen better ways to spend that money. You can't coerce non pub goers into being pub regulars. That's why the smoking ban has had such an impact.

Bullsh1t, and don't get me started on that drivel on being able to stink out another building, getting ashtrays emptied for them 

You completely missed the point and the smoking ban come in long before all the current problems. Smokers never quit going to pubs in the droves you clearly think; most just got on with it and got used to it. As I say when time were good and plenty of money around, there was plenty of smokers in the pub.

Your conclusions, just like the one I'm anti smoking, are utter drivel and based on fcuk all.

[thewobbler]

Smoking ban has fcuk all to with it. There was plenty of people in the smoking areas when times were good.

You can only arrive at this conclusion is you are anti smoking.

The price of drinking at home has always been cheaper than going to the pub. But for a smoker, the value gained  from being able to stink out another building, having ashtrays emptied and being in one of the few arenas where smokers weren't pariahs, made the premium worthwhile. So a €3 pint was better value than a €1.50 tin, even though it cost twice as much.

With smokers leaving pubs, who replaced them? I remember at the time that anti-smokers declared they'd now visit pubs with greater frequency, the truth is this: if you've grown up spending €50 in a pub every week, you think nothing of it. If you've never done it, or not in a long time, you can think of umpteen better ways to spend that money. You can't coerce non pub goers into being pub regulars. That's why the smoking ban has had such an impact.

Bullsh1t, and don't get me started on that drivel on being able to stink out another building, getting ashtrays emptied for them 

You completely missed the point and the smoking ban come in long before all the current problems. Smokers never quit going to pubs in the droves you clearly think; most just got on with it and got used to it. As I say when time were good and plenty of money around, there was plenty of smokers in the pub.

Your conclusions, just like the one I'm anti smoking, are utter drivel and based on fcuk all.

Well as a nation we've been through poverty since day one, and through recessions every other generation - yet the pubs saw it all through. But the last 10 years, since the smoking ban, has witnessed a pub closing each and every day. You can ignore this point, you can get personally abusive towards anyone raising this point, but the point still remains. Put two pubs beside each other in a village, one charging €5 a pint, but allows smoking, one charges €4 a pint and doesn't, and you know as well as I do which one will be pulling a crowd and turning a profit.

[mylestheslasher]

Nothing to do with the smoking ban. Don't know 1 person who stopped going to the pub because of it. The craic is gone from the pub because the people are gone mostly due to the price.

[thewobbler]

Nothing to do with the smoking ban. Don't know 1 person who stopped going to the pub because of it. The craic is gone from the pub because the people are gone mostly due to the price.

Myles, please tell me how pubs survived pre Celtic Tiger?

Honestly I don't think people are realising just how little money there was in the 1980s. In real terms, a pint wasn't that much cheaper then, was it?

[mylestheslasher]

Nothing to do with the smoking ban. Don't know 1 person who stopped going to the pub because of it. The craic is gone from the pub because the people are gone mostly due to the price.

Myles, please tell me how pubs survived pre Celtic Tiger?

Honestly I don't think people are realising just how little money there was in the 1980s. In real terms, a pint wasn't that much cheaper then, was it?

I'd say it was much cheaper but also were there off-licenses in them times? No one was in the debt like people are now either buy to be fair I'm too young to have been drinking in the 80's

[OakleafCounty]

I don't think the smoking ban has anything to do with it. If they done away with it I know I probably wouldn't set foot in a pub again as I've become so comfortable with the smoke free environment it is now.

The point above about knew hobbies and technolgies is very true. Another thing is that a wife is much less likely to put up with a husband who goes out drinking a few nights a week now compared to former years. Also, a young mans role in the home with their choldren is much more hands on now than previously. A marraige is much more likley to end now than before. Also, a lot of men have grown up with fathers that frequented pubs and came home full and have decided they don't want that for their own kids.

[norabeag]

I don't think the smoking ban has anything to do with it. If they done away with it I know I probably wouldn't set foot in a pub again as I've become so comfortable with the smoke free environment it is now.

The point above about knew hobbies and technolgies is very true. Another thing is that a wife is much less likely to put up with a husband who goes out drinking a few nights a week now compared to former years. Also, a young mans role in the home with their choldren is much more hands on now than previously. A marraige is much more likley to end now than before. Also, a lot of men have grown up with fathers that frequented pubs and came home full and have decided they don't want that for their own kids.

+1. Lot of salient points  but I still love the sociability of the Pub. Drink culture has changed a lot for the worse with the pre loading etc. Someone mentioned earlier about taxing off sales more and reducing tax on pub sales. Think that would go some way in  halting the declining  role of the pub in Irish Society.
As a smoker I have no issue with the ban. I would have smoked  15/20 on a night ut but might only smoke 3/5 now and feel I have broken a habit. Remember the oul fella driving home from Dublin, Newry, Belfast with a feed of half'uns in him and eight of us packed in the car . Though I sometimes laugh at it I also cringe at the thought of what might have happened

[LeoMc]

Keep your non smoking 'Italian cafes'. Bars are no good now - oh get ye outside and have a smoke.
Wrong weather for that carry on.
We have the craic with the cheaper tins but just put them into a glass and everybody ends up with the ones they always knew anyway except if ye want ye can shush everybody during the Sunday Game - just for a wee while like before the craic starts again. And we also move round our mates houses weekly and new people appear bit by bit or house by house. Keep your bans. Can't ban people.

Just back in?

[Bord na Mona man]

I remember around the time the smoking ban came in I saw a statistic that the pub trade was already in decline.
At the time, I had the feeling that this decline would be mistakenly attributied to the smoking ban.

Drink driving and cheaper off licence are probably the biggest factors for the pub trade decline.

I also think publicans got a bit carried away with themselves around the turn of the last decade.
Remember how a lot of them slapped on cover charges for the night of the turning of the millennium. In the end, people voted with their feet and the pubs were probably less busy than normal on the night in question.

Then with the changeover to the euro, vintners saw this a good chance to round up their prices heftily.

These might have been a tipping point for the public. Nights in became a bit more common. Soon supermarkets were selling poker sets, cocktail making kits, board games and other props for drinking nights in.

The final nail was probably Eddie Hobbs' tv show 'Rip Off Republic' which forced the government the ban on below cost selling lefted.
Once supermarkets could sell booze as a loss leader the economics were skewed completely.

[thewobbler]

It's only one dataset and it's not been updated since 2009, but the ratio table for price of pint vs average wage, at the bottom of this page, is interesting: http://www.finfacts.ie/Private/bestprice/guinnessindex.htm

I know we're all tied up in silly mortgages these days, and unemployment is on the up, but the price of a night out hasn't changed much in real terms for 50 years.

I fully agree with all the sentiments above about how Ireland has changed as a nation, and that a number of indirect factors have combined to hurt pubs. The changing role/power of "the wife" has had a tremendous impact, as has drink driving enforcement.

But there has only been one direct impact upon the actual pub experience in the past decade, the smoking ban. It's not the only factor in why pubs are closing, but it is a pretty important one.