Decline of pubs offset by rising number of new off licences

The average annual consumption for people aged 15 and over in 2023 was 9.9 litres of pure alcohol. This equates to 400 pints of beer..

Ireland still has the third highest number of pubs per head of population in the world, while the recent decline in pubs has been offset by an increase in off licences opening.

One person dies in Ireland every day due to alcohol-related liver disease while a fifth of emergency department admissions are due to alcohol, according to a new report.

However, the appeal of alcohol is waning, the data from the Health Research Board show.

Almost a third of people aged 15 and over do not drink at all, with an increase in abstainers from 25% in 2018 to 30% in 2022.

The average annual consumption for people aged 15 and over in 2023 was 9.9 litres of pure alcohol. This equates to 37 bottles of vodka (70cl), 104 bottles of wine or 400 pints of beer..

The latest report from the board found that alcohol is the eighth leading cause of death in Ireland. 

It also revealed almost 19,000 hospitalisations were attributable to alcohol alone in 2021, while treatment for alcohol use in 2022 was higher than that of cocaine and cannabis combined.

Ireland is eighth out of 30 countries for the proportion of household income spent on alcohol.

There were 5,527 incidents of drink-driving, and 9,917 incidents of drunkenness recorded on the Garda PULSE system in 2022.

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Lead researcher Anne Doyle acknowledged that there is a small reduction in alcohol use. 

But she said: “What we are seeing now is still very high rates of alcohol use and related harms. During the Celtic Tiger and the early 2000s, there was a very high per capita alcohol use. We are seeing the consequences of that now. The alcohol liver disease is the standout data, and is high and is increasing all the time.” 

Ms Doyle said there is a need for fresher data relating to the role of alcohol in road deaths, with the most recent available relating to fatalities between 2013 and 2017 which showed that 36.5% of road user fatalities for which a toxicology reading was available had a positive toxicology result for alcohol.