This whole thing is nonsense - pubs aren’t closed. And most people aren’t anywhere near a race track on St. Patricks’s Day. Unless they’re in Cheltenham, which is in a different country.
You may be surprised to learn that all the pubs in Ireland used to be closed on St. Patrick's Day, which is now by and large considered a drinking holiday.
Up until the 1970s, Irish law prohibited pubs opening on March 17 as a mark of respect for this religious day. It was feared that leaving the pubs open would be too tempting for some during Lent and would lead to a disrespectful amount of drunkenness on this most solemn day.
Only a guess but this would likely have been because St. Patrick’s Day is a “holy day”. People attend church (lots still do although in the last couple of decades it’s declined massively) and closing pubs would be in line with how some other “holy days” are treated. An example of this is Easter in Northern Ireland. There are still some relatively strict licensing laws over the Easter weekend (although these are about to modernise) with pubs shit for large parts of it.
Why has the number of pubs gone down so much? Have pubs consolidated into fewer larger pubs or is the time spent in pubs down drastically because of other entertainment? I guess I still have a romanticized view of Ireland with uilleann pipers in every pub...
I mean, you might be, but it may not be the pub as you know it. The current Irish plan calls for reopening of pubs in phase 5 (last phase) in late August (I don't think the UK has a concrete plan on this, but it'll likely be similar enough). But it will be pubs with social distancing.
EDIT: Looks like UK pubs may be allowed reopen in July, but with social distancing and table service. So, not very pub-like, then.
Some of those would apply to Ireland, and some not. Ireland has some differences from the UK for pubs. 99.9999% of pubs are not chain pubs. A chain pub here, might have 3 pubs. All pubs are 'free houses' and can sell anything. (This means they sell all the same big brands. There's none of the Real Ale/CAMRA stuff which is a shame). Likewise there was a smoking ban a few years before UK.
No new pub licences have been issued in about 100 years. So if a country pub closes down, the licence is usually sold on (for €€€€) to open another pub somewhere else.
Uhm, what about Guinness? The guinness brewery has been around a lot longer than 1950. Also, are you claiming there was no such thing as an Irish pub before 1980? Again, uhm, no.
Interesting, I still haven't seen Irish pub with loud music. In the evening some of them transform into night bars, so I don't count those. I live in Dublin btw
I would love to see something like this happening in Ireland. Closing times are so early that always causes caos at closing times. Sometimes you have the feeling to rush to get drunk before the night is over specially if you have gone out drinking to late, and don't get me started on the queues on trying to get a taxi ride back home, most of the time waiting on the rain. The government don't seem to understand that longer opening times would be much better for the economy but to ease some of this underline issues with noise, fights,...
Few years back they even brought a new law to close off licenses to serve alcohol by 10pm
No, that's not the reason pubs had to close. If that were the reason I would half-agree with you, but it wasn't. They were destroyed by the economy. Businesses being destroyed by the economy is nothing to celebrate.
It’s probably the busiest day of the year for them.
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