Plenty of pub sales cheer

Tommy Barker looks back at a year when pubs adapted to the smoking ban and the arrival of new competitors.

THE smoke is clearing from the smoking ban fall-out, and a measure of reason has been restored to the Irish pub market.

After several years of rampant price inflation and trading in pubs, the ban on smoking in the workplace hit pubs - and die-hard smokers hardest. But, just as Irish society adapted to the detox fatwa, the licensed trade has begun to change it ways too.