People afraid to have a pint

TWO elements of infrastructure which have undergone major change in rural Ireland over the past decade have been post offices and pubs. Both are regarded as integral to rural communities, acting on one level as essential to warding off rural isolation.

Figures produced by the Department of Finance last year showed that 833 pubs in rural Ireland did not have their licences renewed. The decline of the pub business has been well documented, but there is little doubt that it has impacted on the quality of life for men, in particular, living alone in rural Ireland.

Gerry Mellett is the proprietor of the Ardattin Inn in the village of the same name, four miles from Tullow, in Co Carlow. He cites changes to drink-driving laws for one of the biggest impacts in the trade’s decline.

“People are afraid, they simply can’t do without their cars in today’s world,” he says. “That has had a devastating effect on rural Ireland. I’m not advocating that people should be allowed to drink when they’re loaded, but it is terrible to see people you know who are afraid to come out to the pub and have two pints.”

Mellett attempted to counter the new laws in 2007 by buying a nine-seater bus to ferry his patrons home at the end of the evening. The bus required an investment of €52,000, but he was unable to avail of concessions available to commercial vehicles for a bus of that size.

“I stopped running it three months ago, it was just costing too much to keep on the road,” he says. “We still use two cars to drive people home at the weekends but it is a lot quieter during the week.”

He says he knows a number of men who fall into the category of living alone in rural areas who have stopped attending with any regularity.

Other factors have also impacted on the decline of the pub: The smoking ban; the availability of cheap alcohol in supermarkets; and a changing lifestyle choice that has seen more people drink at home.

Mellett says the days of the pub as a focal point of the community are not going to come back.

“The industry is in a seriously bad place at this point in time,” he says. “We’re going to lose another 1,500 to 2,000 pubs in the next few years at this rate.”

While pubs were traditionally the social centre of rural Ireland, the post office was often the lifeblood of the community. Cold commercial realities have seen post offices disappear across the country. This is despite the fact that the offices represent the largest single retail network in the state, providing more outlets than all the banks combined, according to the Irish Postmasters Union. Five years ago there were an estimated 1,900 outlets nationally, but that is down to 1,100 this year.

A further threat involves the future of the social welfare payments contract. The term for the current contract expires in 2013.

“If that goes, we could lose up to 600 post offices overnight,” says Brian McGann of the IPU.

“Holding on to the post office is the biggest concern in towns and villages across the state.”