This new hotel overlooking the former Portobello Harbour has large signage on the windows of its bar inviting outsiders to come in to use it; but when you do, you need to get the staff to let you in to the jacks because they're card-locked.
So you probably shouldn't bother; even if you're not concerned about anything else relating to the hotel chain.
Quick answer: Nobody knows. But every figure you've seen is wrong
Long answer: Nobody knows, but here's why. And I'm going to give you an estimate that's much higher than any figure you see elsewhere. And it'll still be wrong, in some ways, to some (or all) people - and that's fine.
Let's go through some of the claimed figures, and the huge range within:
The Dublin Pubspotters Guide book, as used by Yuya Abe to attempt to visit every pub in the city (which he did, quicker than I ever will - albeit using a different list of pubs), claims there are "over 900" pubs. I have this book at home and know that it lists many pubs which had been demolished by the time of the books publication, as well as a small number of places that are not pubs. However, this figure is the closest to reality; as it's based on physically counting all the actual buildings, basically.
AI Slop machines, and the dying ruins of search engines, usually tell you there's 772 pubs in Dublin. This is a figure that appears to date from 2018, from the "AIB Pub Outlook Report", a document which I now cannot find; and which probably didn't specify it's sources.
DIGI gave a figure of 759 in 2022.
My guess that both of these figures are taken from the Revenue licence register, counting 7 Day Ordinary pub licences - but I don't consider this valid for many reasons, which I'll go through below.
At the other end of the scale we get this nonsense number. Lovin Dublin cite a UK report claiming there are 251 pubs, and give a population figure of 1.26m for that - so they mean the city and most of its suburbs in that case. The data for that report is apparently Tripadvisor, which certainly does not list every pub (and in some cases lists things that are not pubs, as if they are). It is also likely only core city entries; despite giving the population for a much wider area.
There's two main reasons nobody knows the answer to this, and arguably a third that's less of a main reason, but probably has the largest impact.
This first issue is pretty important in deciding a number. Are you only counting places with a Publicans (7 Day Ordinary) licence as "a pub"?
If you do, you're excluding some of Dublin's most famed bars like the Horseshoe in the Shelbourne; the Cellar in the Merrion and the Library in the Central/Hoxton Hotels, because these have Publicans Ordinary (Hotel) (Public Bar) licences, as you might guess from the name. There are also some former hotels that are operating solely as pubs, but retail a Hotel licence.
You are also excluding the small, but valid, number of pubs with Railway Refreshment Rooms licences; a number of premises that absolutely look, act and feel like pubs that have Publicans Ordinary (Theatre) licences; as well as gig venues. Plenty of people consider some of these to be pubs
You might not want to count *all* of these; but I could direct your attention to the number of restaurants, off-licences and even a university conference centre with 7 Day Ordinary licences - if you start cutting a category, you need to look at all categories.
I wrote about this issue back in 2020, when we were pondering the future of pub opening at all.
How Do We Count Them?
The second major issue is that there's no solid source for where to get a figure from. As you'll have seen above, there's lots of different figures given, with very different sources.
The LVA occasionally state a figure for the number of pubs in Dublin; but they are stating this from estimates based on their membership.
While trying to distance themselves from the actions in a Publicans (Theatre) licenced premises in 2020; the LVA stated that they don't represent hotel bars, restaurants or theatres (see tweet embedded in the previous link) - although one of their board members at that time only had business interests in hotel bars and supermarkets; and I'm pretty certain I've seen LVA plaques in a hotel bar before.
They believe that 75% of pubs in Dublin (and Bray, which is traditionally LVA and not VFI) are members; but don't give figures to back this up. Their figures are usually in the 700-ish range, so they are correcting for this; but will still not get a perfect figure.
So lets just use Revenue's figures - the file is public, right?
The file right now shows 775 Publican (7 Day Ordinary), 49 Publican Ordinary (Theatre), 136 Publican Ordinary (Hotel), 5 Railway Refreshment Rooms and a handful of other types that I consider to be valid to some extent; to a total of 979
But that figure isn't right either. The file shows pubs which have renewed their licence at a given month end, and cannot be taken to be a list of every pub. Some trading pubs do not appear on the licence for years at a time.
Also, the licencing year runs October to September; so while the file right now contains a full years worth of renewals; the file next month will probably be missing 40% of the pubs.
There's also multiple pubs on the register that have been closed for years, or occasionally even decades. These renewals are usually processed immediately too, so they'll be on a partial register from November and all. Do you want to count these?
What Is Dublin?
This one may sound like I've suffered a recent head injury until I explain it...
If you cut the Revenue licence file on "Dublin", you miss a handful of premises which Revenue have decided are in different counties, but actually aren't.
In terms of trading premises that I consider to be pubs, this is currently one pub Revenue believe is in Meath, two that it believes are in Kildare. There was formerly one it believed to be in Wicklow (the Blue Gardenia), but this has permanently closed; another one in Kildare that may reopen; and also the bar in Weston Airport if you wish to count Aerodrome licences - this is also actually not in Kildare, although much of the runway is.
So how many *are* there?
Nobody knows. Didn't I tell you that already? But I did say I'd give my figure.
My running register file at home, which includes trading pubs temporarily missing from the Revenue list *and* the pubs in Not Kildare and Not Meath, is currently exactly 1000. It has been as high as 1012 before. But this list includes premises that are very, very closed or very, very inaccessible for drinking (e.g. now an off-licence), which I have marked off as undoable. Taking these out and we're at about 965
I actually wanted to call this blog "1000 Pubs in Dublin", but in 2016, the file was only in the high 900s; before I got old files from Revenue to locate numbers for some trading yet missing pubs.
Depending on exactly how you want to exclude places that really don't look and feel like pubs, but have licence types that are more like them; and dropping off places that are long-term closed and unlikely to reopen, I'll give you about 850 as a figure. It varies week by week as places close, open or reopen. Some of that 850 you will still probably not consider to be a pub, but they're open and trading and you can get a drink there.
You might need to buy a ticket, or buy a meal; or haul yourself to a hotel in a business park; but they have Publicans licences or one kind or another, or something damn close to it.
A very occasional question I get about entries on the map is why very few of the famed nightclubs of old in Dublin are actually on it.
There's a very simple answer to this - they weren't pubs. Mostly only those in hotels ever had conventional publican style licences originally; albeit some oddities do pop up like the Olympic Ballroom having had a pub licence in its latter days (1995-2000).
Indeed, loads of them sold no alcohol of any description; with those that did often being limited to selling only wine. This wine was often of exceptionally poor quality and exceptionally expensive.
To this day; there are a number of places that people consider to be bars which are trading under the same legislation that these clubs did in the past. I won't be naming names, lest one of them having actually got a pub licence that isn't Revenue listed; but I will try explain the actual legislation and reasoning for why it was done in the past.
The Not Pubs and Not Clubs have one of two categories of licence:
Introduced in 1988 after much opposition by publicans unions, this allows a premises to serve all types of alcohol via table service only; before, during, and for 30 minutes after a substantial meal - that term we remember from the pandemic. They may not have bar service, and they may not serve any alcohol to people who are not dining.
There are 195 of these in Dublin as of the 2024/5 licencing year ending. These range from chain restaurants (Milano, Zizzi, Wagamama, Daata all have these for some premises) through to museum cafes, and plenty of conventional restaurants. There's also a few obvious cases of places that brand themselves as bars, though!
Interestingly, 55 of these have old-style licence numbers, meaning they are >18 years in business, albeit possibly not always as that specific name. In an industry where 18 years in business in ancient, I'm slightly surprised by this.
The first application I can find a record for is for the King Sitric in Howth, applying in September 1988; and indeed this has a licence number of N0002SR, with N0001SR being lost to time; not in any licence file I have stored.
The early applications for Special Restaurant Licences published in the newspapers at the time are effectively a list of the famed restaurants of Dublin of the time - as well as the King Sitric, we see Beaufield Mews, Le Coq Hardi, the original location of Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud, Blakes (which latterly had a full pub licence), Quo Vadis, and the still extant FXBs on Pembroke Street all publishing notices in the early weeks of the new system.
This type of licence, introduced in 1860 under the Refreshment Houses (Ireland) Act, allows the sale of wine, and fortified wine under 23%, for consumption on or off the premises to any adults. It places no restrictions on the circumstances of that consumption on premises - e.g. no need for food; but does not allow a public bar - so table service is officially required.
There are 895 of these in Dublin, more than the number of conventional Publicans (Ordinary) licence holders. Most are restaurants, with some wine bars; and also some potentially inexplicable cases of holders of Publicans (Ordinary) or Publicans (Hotel) (Public Bar) licences also having this licence.
These types of licences are not transferable to a new owner - which is not really a problem when they can be created easily - so there are very few old licences on the registers. One of the oldest licences on the register is for a guesthouse in Glasnevin which does not even mention that it offers wine.
There is an additional layer that can be added to this licence, which is the granting of a Restaurant Certificate by the local courts. This allows for the sale of beer, via table service only, with a meal. It does not allow the sale of spirits. This was added in 2000, and was not the case prior to this.
No online public record of Restaurant Certificates exists, as this is a court procedure rather than a Revenue procedure - this also applies to General Exemption Orders, aka Early Houses for instance.
That various premises, including many older nightclubs, use or used these types of licences explains why they aren't on my map. But why did the premises use them?
There's a multitude of reasons for this, relating primarily to how Ireland, to this day, has no effective concept of a nightclub licence, working as we are still with the 2000 modernisation of the 1927 Intoxicating Liquor Act for most of our legislation.
What we do have are Special Exemption Orders - "late licences", another court procedure with no online records; which can now be obtained by conventionally licenced premises, for a wide range of circumstances, albeit with considerable cost and legal effort.
These are also something that has been around for the life of the current licencing system, but they were extensively restricted under Section 5 of the Intoxicating Liquor Act, 1927.
This limited their availability to hotels and restaurants (so not conventional pubs), in County Boroughs - effectively cities - and not at any time on a Sunday. This made them effectively useless except for events in city hotels, which is why quite a large proportion of nightclubs were in hotels until recent years.
The requirement to be in a County Borough was deleted in 1943, the Orders were made available for licenced holiday camps in 1952, and further extended to "ballrooms" in 1962, with the requirement to serve a substantial meal in those introduced then.
The restrictions on premises type, the ban on Sunday operation, and requirement for a substantial meal were both deleted in 2000.
These regulations drove non-hotel nightclubs to operate as wine retailers instead; although it didn't really give them consent to serve alcohol late without a Special Exemption Order and the requirement for food - the Refreshment House Act limited service to 11pm.
As far as I can tell - 165 year old legislation with lots of amendments is quite hard to follow - enforcement of closing hours for wine only premises that were not serving food, as many of the famed Leeson Street clubs did, was just incredibly weak.
Currently - since 2000 - the Restaurant Certificate allows sale, under restaurant rules (table service, with food) for an hour after conventional closing time; and this is used by some of the last remaining late wine bars that exist. It also allows service from midday to ten on Christmas Day, something astoundingly rarely used!
This was both a very quick to process update as very little changed; and very long - as this is the last file of the licencing year, so any pubs missing for the entire year* are removed from my master list and demoted on my maps to closed; and I also update registered company names etc on said master list
That said, it's the smallest year on year change list I think I've ever ended up with - and a lot of it is still sweeping up pandemic era closures.
I'm also going to use this post to announce that I've decided to drop passenger vessel licences - that is boats - from my target list. I had already excluded Irish Ferries and Stena ships on the same basis that I've excluded planes; but realistically you can't just go for a drink on any of the boats, so there isn't any reason to include them. N2741 Cill Airne, aka "The Boat", has a conventional pub licence.
*if the pub is actually still open, I leave it there - sometimes renewals don't get posted to the file
Monthly changes:
New:
1022516 Moxy Hotel, East Wall - new hotel appearing on the register only days after it opened.
Reappearance:
N2588 CHQ Building, Georges Dock - this was the licence for Ely CHQ, but now appears to be assigned to the entire building, which is becoming a food market in the near future.
Year-on-Year changes
Additions
N0282 Michael Collins, Rush - I'm pretty sure this is still closed. This got re-added in August but I missed it.
Removals:
1003456 Shipwright, Ringsend - burnt out, but was unlikely to ever reopen due to being converted to accommodation
1013026 Dominick Inn, Dominick Street - never reopened after the pandemic
1018936 Napper Tandy, Merrion Row - never reopened after the pandemic, although it was relicenced in the interim with a new number
N0022 Hill 16, Gardiner Street - likely to reopen soon enough as works have been ongoing for a while, but not renewed in 2025
N0185 Index (formerly Voodoo Lounge), Arran Quay - erratic opening history in recent decades means this will likely return
N0273 Smyths, Donabate - replacement pub may turn up in the redevelopment here
S0004 Xico, Baggot Street - closed quietly in late 2023/early 2024
A month interrupted by other beer events - the Beoir AGM and the Dublin Beer Festival - so there was only a single new visit, and limited revisits despite having made a specific aim to return to places I had neglected for decades
S0018 Bowes - deliberate revisit after 20 years
S0164 Horse Show House - another one of those
S0172 The Waterloo - more for phone charging than for pints, but some of those were consumed along the way
N0063 Cumiskeys - to monitor my personal inflation calculator, the pint of Beamish in here. Reported to me at €5.00 in April, it was still €5.00 in late September.
N0097 Underdog - rarely a month goes by without this appearing
S0083 Beer Temple - another fairly common stop.
