1014216 Iveagh Garden Hotel

A lot of the new pub licences in the past decade have been hotels. I suspect if I worked out actual figures we'd find that there has been a noticeable reduction in "traditional" drinking spaces, a lot of replacement with hotel bars.

And these days, those hotel bars are often smaller than they used to be, and not really intended to be used by the public. Some notable cases of this include when I felt I had to buy dinner in 1014503 Hotel 7, or feeling like I'd snuck in to get to the bar in the original 1013980 Premier Inn

So it was quite a surprise to find a vast combined bar and restaurant in the fairly new Iveagh Garden Hotel; with no expectation that I was a hotel guest and no subterfuge required.

Harcourt Street hotels usually have larger, very public bars; albeit with exceptions (see next review for not large, and 1004979 Stephens Green Hotel for one were the bar is a bit buried), so maybe this shouldn't be a surprise.

There isn't a nightclub here, however; so I don't imagine there is huge amounts of outside trade coming in. Bar is reasonable for a hotel, in terms of range, price and atmosphere; and you don't need to get a door code to use the toilets like is quite common in smaller hotel bars.

1021439 Old Fashioned Sams

A huge and slightly rambling new bar and restaurant complex on an awkward site, running from a Harcourt Street basement out to a large, effectively new build structure on Montague Street and Montague Lane. The facades of the old buildings were retained, but the structure inside is new.

Ownership seems a bit confusing here too - the licence suggests a connection to 'Ohana, which is next door on the Harcourt Street side; but it is widely reported as being a Chris Kelly Group premises.

On the evening I attended, Dublin was particularly dead - something that continued for most of my visits in January and February - and the huge premises had a small enough number of staff, concentrating on the corner bar at the main entrance. There were still, however, enough staff to have a barman per customer - and presumably some in the kitchens too!

This is an interesting setup, well designed and well implemented - and should be busier by now than it was on a January afternoon.

1021705 Porters

A new pub that's trying very hard to be old; this pub replaced a bookies in late 2024; although it had had planning for quite a long time before that.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Every Pub In Dublin (@everypubindublin)

 

It'll take a bit of time for the gold trim to weather, the new leather and fabrics to get a bit worn and even for the smell of fresh paint to abate before it looks "genuine" as an old pub, but they've done a decent job.

There isn't anything particularly different or noteworthy about the pub itself, sitting on a street with many well known pubs already - but that may be enough to keep it busy and let it get more bedded in.

1021114 Premier Inn, Newmarket Square

Premier Inn spent a long time with a single hotel in Ireland; but have expanded to a significant chain in Dublin in the space of a few years - with five open and one under construction as of the time of writing this post.

Two of them incorporate former licenced premises in to their sites, so maybe they could call them by the previous name rather than giving them potentially inaccurate locations? This one being "The Liberties" and the Georges Street one being "Temple Bar".

Well, the pub that sat under this hotel was the Red Lion; and the hotel that once stood where the Georges Street one was was, erm, the Red Lion.

Scratch that idea...

Anyway, the actual bar here is tiny, even for an Irish Premier Inn; but is open to the public. I'm not sure why you'd want to come in; but you can. Toilets need a door card to be negotiated from reception, so there's further issues with just popping in for a pint.

1015607 Roe & Co Distillery

Diageo's latest entry in to the world of Irish whiskey came surprisingly shortly after selling off their previous - they bought Bushmills in 2005 and sold it in November 2014; and then announced that they would convert the defunct James Gate power station in to a distillery in January 2017 - a gap of only 27 months!

The name is recovered from a previous distillery which Guinness purchased on its closure in 1927, with the brewery extending on to the site in the following years. I have Roe ancestors, and it's not that common a name - but mine were in rural Kildare (via Newark - they emigrated, came back, and emigrated again with some of the kids staying in Ireland) and these Roes appear to have come from Wexford; so I suspect no relation.

That old power station was converted - in part, there are still some areas with original power equipment, defunct but intact, in the building - to a distillery by 2019. Initially I believe you could only visit here on tours; but at least recently you are able to head in to the Powerhouse Bar without tour booking or reservation, assuming it isn't too busy. 

A nice space, featuring a model of the building it's in - something every pub should have, this is a cocktail and whiskey bar, but with a few Diageo beers available on draught or in bottle also.

Diageo do a good "brand home", as I believe the marketing department like to call this; and with both here and the Open Gate available to visit without a ticket, you can spend a good few hours in them in D8 without paying 1010753 Guinness Storehouse prices.

Price-controlled pints

The ever increasing price of a pint has received a lot of media coverage recently, with €10 being breached in tourist traps, and €7 now seen as quite normal in most of Dublin. There's a significant price range available for the same or similar products though, ranging from sub-€3 pints in suburban Wetherspoons branches up to those tenner pints already mentioned.

But imagine if pints were price capped? It sounds like some form of wonderland (for the drinker) or dystopia (for the publican); but even if you're under 30 it actually happened here in your life time. Sort of.

From the mid 1960s until just in to 2001, price restrictions were introduced for periods of months to years, preventing or capping increases; and often reverting the price of pints, and other drinks, to a previous price.

Legislative Basis

The basic legislation used for imposing these caps was the Prices Act 1958, amended by the Prices (Amendment) Act 1965 - a wide ranging piece of legislation which also relied on the Restrictive Trade Practices Act 1953. This allowed the control of prices on both national and local bases; for pretty much anything the Government of the day wished to do it to. Multiple Statutory Instruments a year were issued under these Acts until the late 1980s, with some - but far fewer - after that.

The general scheme of a liquor price restriction under the Prices Act was to define a date - somewhat prior to the announcement - which prices would be baselined at. A pub would be required to charge no more than that price for a period of time - either defined with an end date, or until the order was revoked.

This not only put a cap on the price of a pint, but also prevented pubs that were charging less than average from increasing their prices to match - at least while the restrictive order was in place. 

Control Orders

The first price controls came in, nationwide, in November 1965, reverting prices on all alcohol products, and canned/bottled soft drinks, in pubs to the price as of May 1st 1965 - with an allowance for duty increases to be passed on.

These prices were held until June 1966, where 1d (1/240th of a pound) a pint was added to a range of named products. 2d a glass was added to most spirits in October 1966. 

In April 1967, the baseline date was changed to April 1st, 1967 - I presume this was done to encompass products which had been introduced in the prior 2 years, as prices had otherwise been controlled during that time.

This order was revoked in December 1967. 

Local price orders applying to tens of individual areas, ranging from as small as Mohill, Co. Leitrim up to the size of Galway come in over the years after 1967. I did not locate a nationwide, or Dublin relevant, order during this time period however.

A nationwide order, for pints and spirits, was introduced in March 1977, using March 11th as the baseline. Increases of up to 2p a pint were allowed in September, and another 2p a pint in July 1978. These July 1978 prices were set as a new baseline; one which would hold until these regular orders ceased in 1985.

Regular increases of 1p or 2p a pint were legislated for, with a more major change coming in September 1979 when nearly all of Dublin (Backweston Park, e.g. Weston Aerodrome; and "any part of the Urban District of Bray" were excluded, although the latter didn't cross the county boundary as far as I was aware) received an extra increase of 1p.

By March 1982's changes, the total allowed increase was now 51p, or 49p outside Dublin. Considering -if we trust that chart that loads of pubs have -  the normal price of a pint was under 51p in July 1978, this price control legislation had allowed prices to more than double in under four years!

The final increase, in July 1985, allowed for 80p / 78p outside Dublin, to be added to the July 1978 baseline. 

Controls on lager and spirits were removed in October 1985, and on stout and ale when the order was fully revoked on December 10th 1985 - with only overnight notice!

After 1985

There was a brief control of Dublin prices, excluding Dun Laoghaire Borough, from July to November 1988, at 22nd July prices. This was the last Dublin price control for nearly 12 years; however from March to October 1997, pint and spirit prices were set to a December 1996 baseline *outside* the four Dublin counties.

Final Hurrah

The most recent price controls were instituted for a brief period in 2000/2001, with pint prices rising rapidly. This was blamed on multiple factors - high inflation (5.6% for 2000), the introduction of a minimum wage for the first time in 2000, high economic growth (9.4% for 2000) and concerns about price gouging during the then ongoing Euro changeover process. Prices had been increasing for some time, with the first saber-rattling about introducing price caps being in December 1998.

Eventually these were introduced. SI 222/2000, set pub prices to those charged in that pub on May 15th, 2000 for a period for 6 months from July 6th, 2000. 

On expiry of those provisions, prices increased immediately in many pubs, and despite the implications that it would be reimposed, within months the Minister had decided not to.

Future Controls?

The Prices Act was revoked in 2007 on the introduction of the Consumer Protection Act 2007; which provides the ability to set maximum prices during a state of emergency only.

The Crypt: S4512 Captain Americas

After finishing (well, I say finishing - I keep finding ones I've left out) my RetroReview series of pubs which I visited before 2016 and then the NecroReview series of places which had fully closed down by the time I got to do their RetroReview I'm left with a tiny handful of writeups to do that are pubs which were entirely off the register before 2016.

Pubs can be closed and remain on the register for years, indeed one of the places I've given a review on the basis that it's permanently closed still holds its licence (N2030 The Good Bits); and the mid/late 2010s financial recovery reopened a lot of closures from the crash, so very few pubs that I've been to have gone for good. I started drinking in Dublin's pubs in ~2003, and legally in 2005; and I'm actually surprised by how few were off the register within the first 13 years. At the moment I think there's only two.

So we're starting with the only one where I have a licence number on file - I was able to get six prior years of registers from Revenue's Statistics office. 

The only Dublin branch of Captain Americas to have closed, that I'm aware of, this opened in 2007 in the never successful public plaza outside 1008408 Glashaus Hotel and seems to have shut down around 2011. I worked in the area from 2007 and would end up here occasionally for work lunches or events

If you've been to the Blanchardstown branch, it was quite like that.

S4514 Arcadia

Some pubs push their food offerings as their main thing on social media - they do make for more unique photos than pictures of pints, lists of match kick-offs/throw-ins or press photos of the main pub entertainers that go around - but few places do it to the extent of Arcadia. Someone involved here considers themselves quite the food photographer - and they're certainly good at it.

In a shopping centre / apartment development in Kiltipper, this was originally the "Kiltipper Cafe Bar", a name that probably indicated the food focus a bit better; but changed a few years ago.

When arriving here, I stood for a number of minutes at the "please wait to be seated sign"; but it appears, like my own local, that if you're coming in to drink you really don't need to do this - the seats behind the bar seem to be fair game for drinkers; and I was directed to sit wherever I liked. (They were selling a gift card to someone in front of me, hence the delay).

The pub was busy, the food looked decent and there's a big enough selection of drinks albeit all macro - I had my first pint of Murphys outside of Cork in about a decade as a result.

Kiltipper is a bit of a pain to get to from anywhere other than along it's single bus route, which was even having sporadic cancellations on the day of my visit; so I don't think I'll ever be back here; but it's ticked.

RetroReview: S3727 Flight Club (as Samsara)

I was scheduling this ahead as a NecroReview, but realised that the as-yet impending, but now long since happened, reopening of this premise as Flight Club would make the status inaccurate. It has re-become somewhere open that I visited pre-2016 rather than somewhere dead.

Indeed, I visited there in about 2007; for a merger party / staff meet-up for my then employer; and I'd never been back since. I cannot remember particularly much about it. 

The premises was, at that time, Samsara; or "SamSara at La Stampa" more specifically; the hotel having taken the name of its restaurant for some time before becoming The Dawson.

There were plans to redevelop the hotel along with the adjoining Royal Irish Automobile Club premises which lead to a decision not to reopen Sams after the pandemic; but these fell through in 2022. The hotel has since reopened as The Dawson Hostel - not a hotel; and the bar as Flight Club - a darts themed pub, something a bit odd as a concept considering there's plenty of darts pubs around as it is, including some with darts boards big enough even for me to hit.

S1994 Killinarden House

We continue a series of pubs in what I can only really describe as "suburban Tallaght" here - in the overall, huge, area that people think of as Tallaght; but not in the village - where I ticked the pubs off ages ago.

Without attempting to rehash the history of Tallaght, much better documented elsewhere - with that blog having spawned a book which I've yet to find on-sale and may have trouble finding as it appears to be out of stock in many places - I've always found the rapid development of the housing areas around Tallaght to be very interesting. 

A primary reason for this is that my parents, in one of the many housing crises gone past, had their first home in one of the many poor ideas that get thrown around during a crisis - a trailer park - outside Tallaght village. They managed to sell the 'house' on before it rotted away, and I believe the site is now under the M50 interchange; but they were amongst the earliest of the tens of thousands of families that moved to Tallaght in the 70s and 80s.

I also worked in Tallaght and latterly Citywest for a good number of years, but relatively poor bus connections back then meant I never really went beyond the village. This has changed, and that is the main reason for this run - and a future run to come - of Tallaght area pub visits.

So, on to the pub - this was built in the late 70s as part of that rapid development; but unlike some of the Tallaght pubs, it isn't a giant barn. Instead it resembles the 50s and 60s suburban shopping district pubs that much of the rest of Dublin have; although the shop section of the site looks to have been redeveloped in the 00s with apartments above.

Inside, it is still a fairly big pub though; with the lounge having a view in to the kitchens and a stage for the various performances held here. There's a piano on that stage, a piano which at the time of my visit was being played / played with by a kid.

Normally, this would cause a discordant clanking enough to drive anyone out of a pub; but from what I could tell, the kid was watching a basic instructional video on YouTube while playing with the piano - result being something almost approaching music. Still not quite my idea of a relaxing setting for a pint though!

Revisited Pubs February 2025

February was a month of very limited mobility after a back injury, which happened after getting these three:

N2404 Grand Central - convenient location after finding somewhere else closed
S0083 Beer Temple - somewhere less, well, bland than the previous one
1004031 Bison Bar / Workmans Club - missed a bus by seconds, and this pub is beside the bus stop

NecroReview: N1958 Becketts Hotel

The second of the accidentally dug up missed pubs, this was missed as it has a Kildare address on the licence file; but is not in Kildare - it is very much in Dublin.

It's also very much closed. Branded more as a restaurant than a hotel, albeit it did always have rooms, this did not reopen after the pandemic. 

I was here for a number of family dinners over the years, at least one of which I wasn't driving for; with the last one I remember being in 2014.

1020980 Glasshouse

This visit was in September, but it appears that I forgot to add it to the queue at the time and only noticed when I wanted to actually link to the writeup!

A "glass box restaurant" - apparently, that's a thing these days - the ground floor here is primarily a bar area and you do not need to eat to get in here. Replacing, albeit not directly, the second Harrys Bar; named after Harry Crosbie and connected with the 3Arena/Point Depot across the square; this is part of the development of the Exo building and brings a bit more life to the area on non-gig evenings.

The interior is rather full of plants, and lights, which does bring the idea that you may be drinking in either a garden centre or a lighting showroom at times.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Every Pub In Dublin (@everypubindublin)

In the ranking of bars around here, it's an improvement on drinking in 10180000 Beckett Locke, but I'd still try get in to 1015426 Rubys

Licence register update, March 2025

 Two small changes for March, nothing massively major though:

Reappearances

N0055 74 Talbot / Mother Kellys, Talbot Street - reappears after a while away.  Still the same operator - the Irish Craft Whiskey Company - who have held the licence for some time (since late 2021), but re-appearing may indicate movement. This pub closed in March 2020 and has not operated since, but was on the register most of the time.

N0869 Donaghmede Inn - this pub also closed March 2020, and got within days of reopening after a refurb, but didn't. It was re-listed for rent yesterday.

S1575 Annie Mays

For a year and a bit, this was the nearest Dublin pub to my house that I hadn't visited - but the BusConnects W6 route was finally stitched together, and it's now fairly quick to get there.

It's also managed (and I believe part owned, at least according to the Irish Times) by one of my near neighbours, so I'm happy I have nothing bad to say about the pub - because Eugene knows where I live! 

The only pub left in Newcastle, after fires at McEvoys and Pollyhops; this is a large enough pub as befits its position as the only watering hole in a large enough town.

Formerly The Gondola, quite a bit of cash has been spent on the pub since the change of ownership; improving the external appearance and giving it a pretty nice interior. There's a quieter front bar section, where I think I was immediately noticed by the management on entering, but as someone he'd recognise from his previous pubs rather than as some form of reviewer, thankfully - and a very large lounge/dining room out back.

Bus stop is right outside, so this is a convenient place to pop in if you're passing on the W6.

NecroReview: 1001897 Bunker

Some work on cleaning up lists made me realise that two premises were left of my "pubs visited pre 2016" list that have since closed. In this case, it was temporarily off the licence register when I made that list.

Bunker is yet another dead club space in Dublin; but it was only this temporarily - this was the second generation Harry's Bar; the bar area of the 3Arena/Point Depot, and echoing an original Harrys Bar in the original Point.

The bar was completely underground, accessed from either its own staircase entrance or through one of the exits from the underground carpark of the Point Square. It was built to be in the basement of the Watchtower building; which never got above ground level.

A dark and slightly awkwardly laid out place to work as a club space, it still got used as such due to the hideous lack of them in Dublin. 

The venue has been physically dug up as part of the construction of the Exo Building and 1020980 Glasshouse.