The astonishing decline of the Irish pub

So, do we lament, or celebrate, the fact that a thousand more Irish pubs, all across the country, are predicted to close over the next decade?

Or that, already, more than 100 pubs close each year in Ireland – 150 have shut down in the first quarter of this year alone?

For those in the hospitality business and for many rural communities – as well as the tourist industry – it’s a lamentation, surely. The Irish pub is world famous as a place of welcome, cordiality and friendship. ‘McCarthy’s Bar’ – the late Pete McCarthy’s odyssey through Ireland in the 1990s visiting various bars hosted by the eponymous McCarthy – not only put the Irish pub on the map, but helped to present Ireland as a place of warmth and good cheer, at a time when the Troubles had publicised a rather different version.

But how astonished our forebears would be to see the numerical decline of the public house, when – especially for campaigning clergy and temperance advocates – they considered Ireland was blighted by too many pubs.

There are 6,498 licence-holders in the country today – down from 8,617 twenty years ago. A hundred years ago, in 1925, there were 16,396 licensed premises. The nationalist writer George Russell (AE) deplored the fact that Ireland had twice as many pubs per head of the population as England and three times as many as Scotland.

In Charlestown and Ballaghaderreen, he noted, “every third house is licensed to sell liquor”, while in Ballyhaunis, there was “a drink shop for every twenty inhabitants”. Complaints about the “over-pubbing” of Ireland ushered in more restrictive legislation about drinking hours, and elicited protests from the Licensed Vintners’ Association complaining that restrictions were excessive.

Yet on the suburban street in south Dublin where I grew up, the two wealthiest families were those of a publican and a turf-accountant. “That shows you where the Irish spend their money,” my father told my elder brother.

Times have changed, and publicans today are often struggling – what with excise duty, the threat of Trump’s trade tariffs, and changing habits of the young, who drink less, or purchase from the supermarket to consume at home. There are even calls for the Government to protect the pub as a social amenity.

It is sad to see a place of community gathering decline or disappear; and yet the campaigns led by pioneers of the temperance movement – like the Pioneer Association itself – is just what they hoped for: fewer public houses in Ireland.

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Clan MacLeod meets Mar-a-Lago

Possibly the most interesting part of Donal Trump’s background was his mother, rarely mentioned.

But with Mr Trump due for a state visit to Britain in September, hosted by King Charles, Mary Anne MacLeod’s life-story is gaining more focus.

She was from Tong, in the Hebridean island of Lewis, the tenth child of a fisherman-crofter. Tong was poorer than even the most deprived parts of Donegal, and troubled by land disputes between absentee landlords and desperate crofters.

Lewis was also fiercely Presbyterian and when Mary Anne’s older sister Catherine became pregnant pre-wedlock – known as ‘antenuptial fornication’ – the family was shamed by the community. Catherine fled to America, and Mary Anne followed her elder sister thither in 1930. She worked as a maid and a nanny before meeting Fred Trump.

Her first language was Scots Gaelic.

As King Charles is keen on all things Scottish – his grandma, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyons, was a Scot – doubtless Mr Trump will be speaking more about his mom than has been his wont.

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I went to the cinema last month to see the acclaimed movie The Salt Path, starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs. It was based on a successful book by Raynor Winn, and described how Raynor and her husband, Moth, walked all around the south-west coast of England after they were made homeless – and Moth was diagnosed with a fatal degenerative illness (CBS).

The movie struck me as a picturesque travelogue, showing charming parts of unspoiled England – even if the characters involved seemed a little too good to be true, including kind-hearted hippies sharing their cannabis joints.

Subsequently, a huge row has blown up over allegations that the narrative was less than truthful; the author’s homelessness was, it was claimed, due to an embezzlement charge; and Moth’s long survival from a fatal illness was considered implausible by medical experts. (Also, their real names were plain Sally and Tim Walker.) The controversy has rocked the British publishing industry – the book had been a best-seller, marketed as a brilliantly honest true story.

Actually, what impressed me about The Salt Path story was that the 250-seat cinema I attended was full – on a sunny June afternoon. Every seat was taken for this uplifting journey.

What the tale offered was hope, not facts. And people are hungry for hope in a sometimes seemingly hopeless world.