Pioneers face closure due to funding crisis

THE Pioneer Total Abstinence Association (PTAA) faces imminent closure unless new funds are received.

In a last-ditch letter to members around the country seen by The Irish Catholic, Pioneer chief Padraig Brady wrote: “The association and central office are facing closure this year unless we receive an urgent injection of funds.”

It would bring to an end a history of the temperance organisation that stretches back to 1898.

Mr Brady wrote: “With the decline in the Pioneer magazine circulation and other income sources, the association is projecting a deficit of €100,000 in 2011.”

Mr Brady confirmed that circulation of the magazine had fallen from a high of more than 35,000 in the 1960s to just about 11,000 today.

In his letter to Pioneers he underlined his belief that “acting swiftly and resourcefully to this appeal will give us a strong bid at averting the closure which currently threatens the future of our cherished and valued Pioneer Assocation”.

It is hoped the appeal will raise somewhere in the region of €300,000 in a bid to avoid the closure of the movement.

Mr Brady said this week that the movement “had failed to move with the times and put our message in modern language”. However, he said, that the movement was “first and foremost a movement based on prayer” and that there was “quite a bit of feeling that we should concentrate on this rather than trying to be things that we are not”.

“There are plenty of organisations out there advocating for lower alcohol limits and moves to tackle alcohol abuse that are doing a very good job without the Pioneers becoming involved in that,” he said.

Mr Brady said that there are in the region of 125,000 to 150,000 members of the PTAA in Ireland.

For more than a century the PTAA has campaigned against heavy drinking and promoted temperance. But, now, the once-iconic organisation looks set to call it a day and shut up shop as a result of the economic collapse.

Founded in 1898 by Jesuit priest Fr James Cullen, the Pioneer Pin soon became a ubiquitous symbol of teetotalism set against an alcohol-fuelled culture.

About 20% of Irish people report in surveys that they are non-drinkers, the highest in Europe.

However, statistics show that in 2010, the average Irish person aged more than 15 drank 11.9 litres of pure alcohol. That’s the equivalent of about 44 bottles of vodka, 470 pints or 124 bottles of wine.