The Irish pub has long been a cultural staple of Ireland.
From its warm and friendly atmosphere to its cuisine of Tayto crisps and Guinness, the symbol of the Irish pub is an enduring one, and many of us will have fond memories from within their walls.
But is the tradition of heading down to the local a dying one? And is it down to the younger generation to revive it?
Alcohol prices have been steadily increasing over the years, and this has hurt publicans as well as customers. A weekly night out in the local may well break the bank these days, and this undoubtedly deters the cash-strapped 20-somethings from making it a habit of theirs.
When it comes to the overall picture of nightlife in Ireland, new figures from Give Us The Night found only 83 nightclubs remain open in Ireland to date, marking an 83 per cent decline within this century.
You'd think this would mean a surge in popularity of local pubs, but this is not the case. In fact, it seems Irish people have made a new habit of drinking at home rather than going out.
According to the recently published Drinkaware Barometer 2024, almost one-third (32 per cent) of adults who currently drink now report that drinking alone at home is their most common drinking occasion (at least once a week).
This is followed closely by 30 per cent who drink with family or housemates over mealtimes and 27 per cent who drink with a partner or housemate outside of mealtimes.
Speaking to BreakingNews.ie, chief executive of the Vintners' Federation of Ireland (VFI) Pat Crotty said the pub as a cultural institution was known for its reliability, but that this stability is getting increasingly hard for publicans to provide as they battle with cost pressures.
"If you talk about it as a cultural institution, the pub, and particularly the rural pub, was something you could always depend on to always be there and always be open.
"Now the cost of opening the door, the cost to have someone standing behind the counter, there's no small cost anymore.
"Every single cost is a significant cost now, and when you add it up, that's why you're seeing more and more rural publicans particularly saying, well, it's really not worth my while trying to run shifts five days over seven where I have to split people and do all sorts of things and ask them to change days and do everything.
"They end up saying: 'We'll just stay closed Monday and Tuesday we'll run a five-day shift from there to the weekend'."
The 'bedrock' of culture and tourism
Crotty said the Irish pub as an institution is the bedrock of our community and culture and is an "absolute bedrock" of our tourism industry.
"I mean, every American particularly, but every person from Germany and France and everyone who comes to Ireland, they swear by their experience in the Irish pub," he said.
"It's where they meet Irish people, where you live. I mean, it's hard to walk up to people on the street to have a conversation. But it's very easy to have a conversation in a pub and that's where you get the music and everything.
"All these pubs are not only sustaining themselves, but they are sustaining musicians, they are sustaining other activities in their own communities. They are the supporters of the local GAA club. They are the supporters of every other thing that's going on, every charity and every other thing that happens.
"They're the first one to be asked to be organisers. They're asked: 'Will you do that? Will you put on an event for us? Will you fund us?'
In every community they do their bit, and they won't be there in another while if things keep going the way they're going.
Crotty said publicans are struggling due to the multiple increases to minimum wage in recent budgets.
"Our government has to decide: 'Okay, if we're forcing them to spend the money here, then we have to give them back a bit there', and the obvious place for them to do it is twofold.
"One is if they're increasing the cost of labour and the payout to the staff, then maybe reduce the employers PRSI. But they would have to reduce it by a good bit to achieve it, and they probably wouldn't like that much.
"Another one would be to make the cost of beer a little cheaper. The government takes a huge cut in excise on draught beer and they certainly wouldn't reduce excise all over because the biggest winner then would be the supermarkets and the off licences, who are doing nicely anyway.
"But if they only reduced it or gave a rebate on draught beer, you would have a situation where it would cause the cost of your product as it comes in the door to be less, which means you could sell it for less and still make a profit and that would help you to stay alive but also help the customers to have reason to come in more often."
Young people
Although most young people did not suffer from the high mortgage interest rates of the past couple of years, those that moved out of home were paying high rents, Crotty said, potentially impacting their pub-going habits.
"We know, with young people, that there's a lot more health consciousness and everything else going on. They have a lot of different things going on with their habits, but they still like to go to the pub and they do like to have a blow out too once in a while.
"So they might not do it exactly the same way as we did in the previous generation, but they haven't thrown it all out."
Crotty said a pattern has been noticed in terms of pub-going habits among the younger generations.
"The one thing we do know is that night sales and particularly significant nights out are far more event-driven or occasion-driven.
"There are some who need you to give them a good reason to say: 'Okay, we've organised the crew, we're going down to the pub'.
"You will see that the places that have more festivals and events, the pubs there on their own organise more stuff, whether it be music or other kinds of entertainment.
"But you're giving people a reason, and it can't just be the same old, same old.
"There has to be an event once in a while to shake them up and remind them that they need to make a decision to come to the pub."
