Letter to the Editor: Our local restaurants and pubs need support

The Irish Examiner recently described the closure rate of good restaurants as “high and relentless”.

CSO figures show that pub sales have slumped yet again and it has been claimed that more than 60% of drinking now takes place in private homes as opposed to public houses.

Pubs and restaurants are huge generators of economic activity in any urban or rural neighbourhood. Bar staff, food and drink suppliers, security companies, taxi firms, professionals such as accountants, etc, all make a living from them.

The tourism industry relies a lot on them and one survey put a good night out in a pub or restaurant near the top of the list of overseas visitors holiday experiences in Ireland.

For many single, separated, widowed or elderly people the local pub/restaurant is one of the last places left where there is any opportunity for meaningful social interaction.

It is also a place where neighbours can get to know one another as opposed to just nodding at each other when passing by on the street.

Irish Examiner columnist Jonathan deBurca Butler once described popping down to the local as “keeping in touch, having a laugh, talking rubbish”.

Your columnist Louise O’Neill wrote (Weekend, January 11) she does not miss alcohol but does miss “the camaraderie and the bonding” and that she made some of her best friends on nights out “spilling secrets in dark corners of pubs and clubs”.

The high cost of property, rent and childcare, etc, means that many young couples do not have enough money left over at the end of the week to buy a bag of chips, never mind go out to a good restaurant.

The so-called EU bailout, when taxpayers here paid nearly half the cost of the European bank crisis has had a devastating effect on consumer spending.

Around €8bn a year is being drained from the domestic economy because of the politicians’ weak response to Frankfurt’s demands.

As an Irish Examiner editorial recently put it, these businesses enrich our lives and it may be time to find a way be more supportive as a society.

- Michael O’Flynn

Friars Walk

Cork