Beer drinkers down one billion pints

IRISH beer drinkers downed more than one billion pints of beer last year as they drank most of Europe under the table.

Averaging at 256 pints of beer per head of adult population, the Irish just trail the hard-drinking Czechs, but galloped ahead of the Germans, Austrians and British.

A further major survey, published last week, showed Ireland topped the league along with Finland as Europe’s worst binge drinkers.