MusicFanzz / CC BY-SA
These twee horrors appeared in 2000, apparently "awarded" by "Bloomsday Publications" to places decided to be an "Authentic Dublin Pub". These signs appear on the walls of pubs that didn't exist in 2000, or are not in Dublin. And as Dublin By Pub points out, the quote is wrong.
— Dublin By Pub (@dublinbypub) June 16, 2020
I tried to find out anything else I could about Bloomsday Publications. Firstly, it is neither a registered company or registered business name in Ireland, Northern Ireland or GB. The usual newspaper archives search turned up a single ad in 1992 for something unrelated in Kilkenny. Google returns nothing but references to the plaque. Proquest has some of the licenced trade publications, but with no library access at the moment that option is closed off.
However - a Intellectual Property Office search found that an attempt was made (and abandoned) to register it to a staff member of the James Joyce Centre in 1998. So it seems there was some more solid basis behind. Surely the James Joyce Centre would have been a more significant sounding awarding body name than a made up publisher? And how on earth would such an organisation get the quote wrong?
There may have been some significance to the awarding process in 2000, but that's 20 years ago now and there is no quality control on where they've gone now (if there ever was!)
I've seen them appear from nowhere after renovations on pubs in the 2010s, which can easily be explained by their ready availability on the second hand market - at this moment, an antiques dealer has cut their price to €235.
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