Opinion

Don’t say the craic of doom has come for Ireland’s pubs

Alex Clark
Sun, 27 August 2023 

Photograph: Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters

A question for the times: is there anywhere in the world where you can’t get a pint of Guinness in a joint draped with green, white and orange tricolours and belting out the hits of Christy Moore? Such desolate places must exist but they appear to be vanishingly rare.

If the Irish pub is one of the country’s most successful exports, there’s worrying news about its fortunes at home. Since 2005, nearly 2,000 pubs have closed, and since 2019 – a period of lockdown and sharply rising costs – more than 450 have called time for good. Unsurprisingly, the perennially populous Dublin has been affected less than smaller towns and rural areas.

It is, of course, all relative. In the riverside town five miles from where I live, we look mournfully at the half-a-dozen shuttered bars that thrived in our drinking memory; but we still have our pick of at least half a dozen more. The town has just over 1,500 inhabitants.

We look mournfully at the half a dozen shuttered bars that thrived in our drinking memory

It was to one – a tiny space that still keeps room for a shop at the front, where you might buy a few rashers or some fly spray – that the congregation of the Cistercian abbey at the heart of the town repaired after a wedding a few days ago. We needed to get a shine on before the reception proper started, and where else would you do it?

The problem with writing about Irish pubs, especially if you’re a blow-in like me, is that everything sounds invented for comic effect. What can I say? It is true that I have a fond memory of hubris punished when, during a family session in a favourite local – one that also doubles as an undertaker – we decided to join the pub quiz. Metropolitan liberal elite humanities graduate that I am, I envisaged an easy victory. I had not reckoned on several questions involving the results of nearby lower-league hurling fixtures, concocted as the landlord flicked through the sports pages of the Carlow Nationalist, nor marks awarded to those who knew which graveyard was closer to the establishment (a wag: “By road, John, or as the crow flies?”). We thought to gain advantage when the price of the plots in said graveyards cropped up, my mother-in-law having memory of a recent purchase in our extended circle, but it was to no avail. I think we came last.

Nor have I embellished the occasion on which a particularly well-refreshed gent gathered me up for a dance and, hearing my English accent, cried: “Sure, never mind! Give us a kiss, the war is over!” I recall my waltzing partner later having his car keys gently confiscated and his good-natured son being called to fetch him.

Neither does the sight of two young fellas, clearly not on their first pint, watching agog as the pub TV showed the culmination of True Detective (“They’re shooting your man Farrell to bits! Jaysus!”) require further ornamentation.

One more: a quick stop-off on a trip to the west, on a hot and dusty afternoon in a one-horse town. An elderly gent sipping Guinness at the bar, dressed smartly in a beige suit. On his feet, socks and open-toed sandals; on his head a colourful sombrero. We did not ask.

Speaking of Colin Farrell, Irish pubs are not all exact replicas of the convivial, warm darkness that sustained the characters in The Banshees of Inisherin. But they are still the very best pubs you will ever find.

• Alex Clark is an Observer columnist