Supermarket Pubs - decades before Lidl

Northern Ireland shares much of the core of our antiquated liquor licencing laws, as they were defined for the island of Ireland in 1902. One element of this, that our equivalent of has been removed, is a sufficiency test for any "new" licences - which, like here, are created on surrender.

Lidl were denied the option to open a new off-licence in Dundonald due to there being sufficient off-licences nearby; but some pubs nearby had closed. This allowed them to open a full pub; and full pubs in both jurisdictions can sell off-sales. So The Middle Ale was born, and we get news articles about this being the first supermarket pub. Often claiming "in the world".

It isn't even the first supermarket pub on the island of Ireland. 

You can try cut the definition of a "supermarket pub" lots of ways, but I can assure you that Ireland has had basically all of them; with Dublin covering most bases.

Even after deliberately excluding the extremely common (but not in Dublin) pubs-with-shops where the shop is now quite big, and weird cases like a co-op supermarket with an actual but rarely open bar (Inishkeel co-op Glenties); we have lots of examples.

These include the direct equivalent of Lidl Dundonald - a supermarket chain opening a pub to run as an off-licence; but also a supermarket chain operating multiple pubs while awaiting redevelopment, a supermarket chain running supermarkets *in* pubs; and some edge cases including Lidl themselves holding planning and a licence in Dublin.

Roches Stores

Over fifty years prior to The Middle Ale; Roches Stores did exactly the same thing, albeit not for quite the same reasons. Wanting an off-licence; they purchased the licence from the Princes Bar on Princes Street. However, this was initially moved to a unit at 23 Upper Liffey Street, fitted out with a bar but primarily operating as an off-licence. 

 

Evening Herald, 6th August 1975

During the limited time it operated, it was reported that only about a fifth of their sales volume was at the bar. However, this gives us an example of a supermarket operating an almost Potemkin pub as a method to have off-sales.

 

Irish Independent, 26th November 1976

Despite denials that the intention was to move the off-licence in to the Henry Street store, this happened during expansion of the store in the late 1970s. 

Younger readers may not remember Roches having conventional supermarkets, as they had dropped this by the time they sold the stores to Debenhams; but they operated their own for some decades before franchising them out to Supervalu.

H Williams

In something even more challenging for younger readers, the next case of a supermarket chain operating bog standard pubs involves a chain that nobody under 40 can actually remember going to.

H Williams, a large chain which went bust in 1987, and one which retail architecture aficionados can still sometimes detect the influence on in terms of store design for the often Tesco or Supervalu stores that now occupy their units, had multiple pubs in Dun Laoghaire for at least nine years.

The best recorded of these is the pub at 108 Upper Georges Street, Dun Laoghaire, which they bought in 1964 - a pub very famous for having been host to a 14 year strike from 1939 to 1953. This pub continued to operate - as "Hibernia", named after the Dun Laoghaire<>Holyhead ferry MV Hibernia I assume, until May 31st, 1973.

Also closing on May 31st were the Albatross (probably named after the LV Albatross light ship) at 113 Upper Georges Street, which H Williams had owned since at least 1965 (Thoms Directory)  and the Glenburnie (no idea about the name origin) at number 106, first explicitly listed as H Williams owned in the 1972 Thoms. They are also recorded as the owners of 114 in 1969 Thoms, but this is a retail/office unit not a pub.

This coincident closure was for demolition for the development of Dun Laoghaire Shopping Centre. This makes it look like H Williams had been assembling properties here for this redevelopment; but I cannot find anything confirming that they were even involved in the proposal. They certainly did not develop it themselves - that responsibility falling to the still extant MEPC, with H Williams even pulling out of an agreement to operate the anchor supermarket at the last minute.

This supermarket eventually opened as a Quinnsworth, and Quinnworths HQ would end up in the upper floors of the building - Tesco Ireland remains there today.

The replacement shopping centre had at least two, possibly three separate licenced premises - latterly S1329 Farrells (closed 2017), Platinum formerly Paparazzi nightclub (closed 2000s) and S2206 Buck Henrys (closed 2000s). 

Farrells, at least, used a licence from one of these three pubs - confirmed by a 1977 licencing application referencing a 1973 court order preserving a licence or licences from the demolished pubs. A second bar, Dunelles, was open from 1977 also and I suspect this is what eventually became Platinium. Buck Henrys unit was initially licenced in 1983, rather late to have preserved a 1973 licence

Dunnes Stores

In the more modern era, we have Dunnes Stores operating a supermarket in a pub. Twice!

The former S0398 Playwright in Blackrock, after a period of being a TGI Fridays and a longer period of sitting empty, has been converted to a Dunnes Stores supermarket, and this still retains its pub licence. I actually ticked this off when it was TGI Fridays, so I do not feel any urge to try drink something from the off-licence on site; but they could allow this if they wanted to.

They also briefly had a branch in the former S0396 Magic Carpet in Cornelscourt, operating again under a pub licence, but have closed this down.

Other examples / edge cases

Outside of Dublin, Findlaters held pub licences on at least a few of their supermarkets, a business they came to late and which they eventually exited (all detailed in the excellent book on the family, available free to read online); but I would consider these to have been traditional grocer-pubs that developed in to supermarkets with pubs; rather than a supermarket explicitly operating a pub.

Dunnes Stores found themselves the holder of the licence for the former S2278 Baron Johns in Crumlin for some years, but never actually operated it.

Lidl have been trying to sell a site with planning and a licence for a pub outside their Belgard Road store - which replaced S1709 Belgard Inn - for some years now. 

1998 in The Docklands - an Evening Herald pub crawl of sorts

There's nothing more that I like running across in a newspaper or magazine archive that someones documented Dublin pub crawl - except maybe their list of favourite pubs that is.

While looking for an address to confirm somewhere probably wasn't a pub (Wrights of Fishermans Wharf restaurant which I think may have been the two storey unit opposite the Harbourmaster, but I'm still not confident of that); I came across a 1998 pub crawl of Dublin's docklands by Evening Herald journalist Linda Higgins.

While the docklands were significantly less rough and ready than they had been even five years early by 1998, they were not what they are today, and could be a somewhat dodgy place to hang around. The article was written for the first arrival of the Tall Ships Race to Dublin, so there would be large crowds in the area looking for refreshment. It was not a suggestion that people would randomly go to the docklands for pints!

I have previously written of my own micro-crawl of the very few remaining pubs on the South Quays, covering how many there once were. By 1998, only some of these still existed; but the Herald covers both sides of the river to give a good number of places. There are also, unfortunately grainy, photos of most of these pubs - some of which were in their final years of operation.

The pubs are not in an order that you could have practically visited them in, particularly with there being two fewer bridges over the Liffey in 1998, but I'll cover them in the order from the paper.

The first premises that Linda writes up is The Funnel at 24 City Quay, which she describes as recently opened. I knew of this more as a music venue, operating from ~1997 to ~2000, but there was a restaurant there too according to the review, which complimented its food. This was an early part of the South Docks to be redeveloped, and I believe this is now an apartment building with TC Mathews Carpets in the location of the pub.

Jumping over the river, the next pub is N1833 Harbourmaster. This still trades, although there were plans afoot to demolish the newer section of the pub to replace it with a hotel. For a second pub in a row, a food menu being "Californian" is mentioned, something I don't quite grasp - I've eaten in the Harbourmaster many times from the 00s onwards and never thought of the food as Californian!

The then Jurys, now N1900 Hilton Garden Inn comes next. This was the first of the now many hotels built or under construction in the North docklands, and has changed significantly since - there was apparently a newsagents and a very seperated pub area to it in 1998. 

Leaping back across the water, the then newly renovated S0153 The Ferryman is next. This also still trades and is a semi regular location for me, it serving as one of the two regular pubs for work events in my current job.

Linda then heads, or writes, back along the quay towards the city to Colombia Mills. This is another place I had known of a music venue first and foremost, but in 1998 it also had Colombia Bar & Grill on the premises; offering very very traditional sounding Irish pub food for the time. Considering I went in to see the Tall Ships and almost certainly got brought to get extremely bland stodgy pub food somewhere, I do wonder whether I did actually get to Colombia Mills; as an unaware 11 year old!

Continuing back Westwards, we then next get to S3132 O'Reillys under Tara Street Station, still trading and still doing food; despite it never having crossed my mind that they would. This is the pub furthest out of the docks covered in the main article.

We then have a neck-snapping return back East on the South docks, to get to Dockers. This both is and isn't the pub currently trading with that name from some rare surviving original buildings - it was half the size and significantly less fancy in 1998; and only survived the wrecking ball by not having been demolished before the Tiger died. Food, not a regular offering, was being added for the duration of the Tall Ships.

We now teleport across the river to Valance & McGrath, of which the building and possibly some of the interior still exists, as the Bottle Boy bar of 1016228 Dean Docklands hotel. This was one of the last traditional Docklands pubs to close - really the last, because The Ferryman only ever briefly closed for a refurb - but did food offerings and hence got listed.

A non-pub, in Quay 63 restaurant, is up next. This is not well documented online, but after much digging I am fairly sure it was in the small red building beside the old British Railways Hotel that was knocked in the mid 2010s for Salesforce. This is followed by another, I believe, non pub in the elusive Wrights in the IFSC.

Two final recommendations for drinking alone are giving - Kellys pub, quite far out in to the South docks, which would not last for much longer after 1998; and Kennedys (now S0022 The Workshop) at Tara Street station - even further in to the city than O'Reillys.

Rather strangely, the photo montage at the top contains two premises which are not written up - Campions, which was knocked to build the Convention Centre (but did not give its licence to it - it has a unique National Convention Centre licence); and the Point Depot. The latter may have been in lieu of Quay 63 which is not photographed, and neither is Wrights.

The Comeback of Thatch - 1980/90s neo-rusticism

Dublin has a reasonable number of thatched pubs, for a fairly urban environment. There aren't any in the city centre, but there are plenty in suburbia.

However, they are almost all pastiche in style. The thatch is real - very real, very expensive and requiring very skilled trades to install and maintain it; but the pubs were not thatched originally, and some are or were new buildings.

 

As far as I can tell, the trend for this was started by the only thatched Dublin pub to have since been demolished (yet!), the S0440 Stillorgan Orchard, which was thatched in late 1988.

 

A number of other pubs were thatched over the next few years, as this trend proliferated. S0232 Glenside was thatched during a renovation in the 90s, with N0300 Lord Mayors in Swords being thatched during its extension renovation in 1992 (interestingly, lead by then the Douglas Wallace Opperman architects, the practice of the recently deceased Hugh Wallace). The Lord Mayors is to be demolished, removing another thatched pub from the county.

 

S0398 The Playwright in Blackrock - now a Dunnes Stores with a pub licence - was rebuilt completely in 1994, and thatched at the time. When converted to a Dunnes, the long unmaintained thatch was replaced with slates. 

 

All of these four - and potentially more Dublin pubs - were thatched by Kyran O'Grady, a first generation thatcher - something I believe is quite rare, as it is more often passed down families - who is still working today. 

 

N1128 Courtneys in Lucan is another pub which has a "modern" thatched roof, but I haven't been able to place when this went up, other than that it still had slates in 1970. This may be a 1980s/90s addition, or may be somewhat older.

 

On the slightly older scale, 1002618 Taylors Three Rock is reported as having had its thatched roof "added" in a review in October 1972, which indeed references there being extremely few other thatched pubs around - citing one in Galway as the only other.

 

 I  have severe suspicion about the integrity of S1583 An Poitín Stil in Rathcoole - this advertises itself in 1992 in a manner that makes me suspect it was first thatched then; and I cannot find a reference before them.

Now, not every Dublin thatched pub is a 20th century pastiche,.

S1580 The Rathcoole Inn's thatch, in comparison to basically everything else mentioned here, appears to be genuinely original - the trustworthy Heritage Houses of Ireland Facebook page speculates that it is "'possibly' Ireland's largest surviving historic thatched structure"

DG0478 The Man O War I think is possibly also genuine, has had some issues with its thatch recently - a fire which damaged it, but was not severe enough to force it to close for more than a day.

Toby, Berni and JDW - British chain pubs in Dublin

The presence of English chain pubs in the Dublin market - currently, just a smattering of JD Wetherspoon premises and no solid plans for any more - is unpopular with many, but it isn't particularly new.

While the first JDW to actually open in Dublin was 1009755 Three Tun Tavern - since sold and renamed The Blackrock - in 2014; JDW had been sniffing around Ireland for quite some time prior to that. They had purchased a building on Capel Street with intent to convert it in to a pub in 2003, however they fairly rapidly sold this, writing down €900,000 on it and other costs involved in the abortive project.

They now operate three suburban and three city centre pubs - N2358 Old Borough, Swords, N2244 Great Wood, Blanchardstown, S3795 Forty Foot, Dun Laoghaire; 1015767 Silver Penny, Abbey Street, 1017594 Keavans Port, Camden Street and S4345 South Strand, Grand Canal Dock. A handful of pubs outside Dublin have all been sold off, and development plans for further pubs cancelled.

update: A July 2000 Sunday Business Post article claims that JDW were outbid on tenders to run two pubs under development at the time - 1010804 Drunken Fish, then branded tentatively as "Kings Excise Bar" but I believe opened as Excise; and somewhat oddly, the premises which is now their S3795 Forty Foot. If true, this would suggest an even longer history of kicking tyres on the Dublin market.

JDW aren't the only British pub chain to have poked around at Dublin and backed off.  Mitchells and Butlers have been reported as having kicked tyres on a number of large pubs various times up until 2014, as have Greene King - the latter apparently having gone as far as appointing advisors to negotiate with pub owners in 2013. Whitbread - the owner of Premier Inn who are expanding at a great pace in Ireland currently, formerly operated pubs (and a brewery) and were also apparently looking to buy Irish pubs in the late 1980s.

However, JDW and other assorted big chains are nowhere near the worst of what you could import from the UK, and Dublin certainly had those extremely tacky ones too.

There was a single branch of the Berni Inn pub steakhouse chain, in the premises which is now Tapped on Nassau Street. This chain was best known for offering the exceptionally cliched menu of a prawn cocktail, a steak and chips, and Black Forest Gateau; although clearly this was not compulsory. Drop the prawn cocktail and I'd be quite willing to eat that still, but anyway...

This was a joint venture with Clayton Love Group, the frozen peas to property entity, who had bought Jammets Restaurant that operated on this site before the Berni Inn. It opened in 1970 and seems to have closed in 1986 or early 1987, with there being bar and club elements open alongside the restaurant - such as the Ploughmans Bar and Mac's nightclub. There were proposals for more Berni Inns around Ireland but it appears none ever opened.

More recently, indeed after the sole Berni Inn had close, the somehow still going Toby Carvery brand entered Ireland in 1988. This brand is now owned by the aforementioned Mitchells & Butlers, but in 1988 was a subsidiary of Bass.

Toby Restaurants (Ireland) Limited assembled a small collection of large pubs - S0369 Step Inn, S1236 Mount Merrion House and N0313 Coachmans Inn; and extensively renovated them into the format of Toby Cavery pub/restaurants. These were sold off between 1991 and 1993, losing over £2m in the process between purchase and renovation costs. 

These premises kept their original names, but the renovation added "Toby Carving Rooms" to the pubs, the first one at the Step Inn being opened by TV presenter Derek Davis. The Coachmans is still a noted carvery venue. but is to be mostly demolished for a hotel development; with the Mount Merrion already closed and the Step Inn having moved somewhat up-class in its food service.

I should also add the perplexing presence of a pub-licenced former Little Chef out past the airport, but I don't think this was from a trial of having Little Chef Pubs!

edit: it is probably worth mentioning that Allied Domecq dipped their toes in to Dublin in 1995, but this was a brand protection measure more than anything else. They owned a chain of pubs vaguely based on the Scruffy Murphy's pub in Dublin, so they bought it. This was their only pub in Ireland and I believe was sold before or when Punch Taverns (the former Bass estate) bought their pub estate in 1999. I have documented this before.

The Pubstaurant - how Irish licencing laws cause restaurants to get pub licences

As I get to the difficult to tick end of the list of Dublin's pub licences - having long since finished everything you'd consider to be a "normal pub" - a reasonable amount of what I have been ticking off for the last 12 months have been restaurants.

These restaurants all hold full pub licences - I am not intending to tick off everywhere with a Special Restaurant Licence (hereafter SRL) that allows them to sell the full range of alcoholic drinks. 

Some of them are in former pubs that have since become restaurants, e.g. S0297 Daata in Blackrock is in a building which has had many pub incarnations, and there has been a licence on this site for likely over a century. The other branches of the now expansive Daata chain do not hold pub licences.

But rather a lot of them are not, and instead bought in a pub licence on opening, or at another time afterwards. Pub licences are not cheap - depending on demand they can range from €45000 upwards, and have reached over €100k in the modern era (and one traded for over £1m in the old era where they could not be moved far easily).

Pubs do this because it is significantly easier to have a conventional bar with one. A SRL limits how you serve drinks - table service only, when you serve drinks - limits before and after meals and on the minimum cost of meals, albeit that cost is now extremely low, and to who you serve drinks - only those actually dining.

Possibly more importantly than all of these issues for many restaurants, is that SRLs additionally place onerous requirements on what food and drinks you serve. 

The food requirements are very traditional including a requirement to offer soups and meat main courses; and for drinks bar must have an "adequate wine list" on a physical wine menu presented to diners,  and offer both spirits and beers "of Irish origin". So no Asian restaurants serving vegetarian food with only Asian beers allowed then! I somehow suspect these rules are not enforced to their full extent anymore, but the SI is unamended and in force to this date.

The regulations go so far as to define the types of chairs (must be cushioned) and tables (if no tableclothes, they must be polished hardwood with table mats) a restaurant must have, that the restaurant has a cloakroom, that it has gendered toilets and that "table appointments" - everything on the table like salt cellars, candles, etc - match between tables. Basically you need a prim and proper 1980s Irish restaurant to comply with the rules.

I have also seen claims elsewhere that a SRLs doesn't allow draught beer; but I cannot find any legislation to back this up; and I believe it is a conflation of how you are not allowed have bar service. Draught taps does not equal bar service, but it would certainly conjure up images of such.

You can also apply for "late licences" - special exemption orders - to serve alcohol at later hours should you have booked a function that requires this, which cannot be done on a SRL.

So a full pub licence makes for a much easier time actually serving whatever alcohol (and food) you want to serve in a restaurant. 

A recent visit of mine to 1022717 Ivy Asia shows multiple reasons why - they do not serve any beer of Irish origin, their food menus do not match the late 80s Irish idea of "proper" as specified in the SI, and you can stay drinking cocktails for quite some time after you've finished eating if you so wish. I'm pretty sure the "table appointments" weren't identical on every table either.

Restaurants that have gone down the route of getting pub licences range from relatively high end places like both Ivy branches and the nearby Dunne & Crescenzi, through to fast casual places like Captain Americas, and when still trading, TGI Fridays. 

The in house restaurants of the Brown Thomas and Harvey Nichols department stores, multiple restaurants in the former Press Up empire and odd dual uses like the Malahide Siam Thai's small cocktail bar and the now gone Dundrum Donnybrook Fair doing off-sales as well as its restaurant make up the bulk of the rest of the pubstaurants. Not all of these places welcome non-dining drinkers; but plenty do - as you can see from my many writeups on here. I may go back and tag them all as such in future.

The Sally O'Brien Lookalike Contest - Harp promo from 1983

I recently took possession of a collection of beermats, dating from at least the mid 1960s (based on there being Time mats) to the mid 00s - mats I remember being current in my drinking era as well as specific 2003 Rugby World Cup ones.

These will provide some much needed content on here and on Instagram for the next while, considering the lack of pubs left for me to visit; and the exceptionally limited number of new openings there have been so far in 2026 (and with little expected to come soon).

One thing that struck me was the number of cases of the mat being a competition advertisement (and often, but not in this case, an actual entry form), mostly in the first half of the 1980s. And while a lot of these were for prize draws - tickets to events, holidays, and electronics being the common prizes - one particularly stood out.

Harp Lager, which has started to reappear in Dublin's pubs in recent years (particularly after Diageo lost the Budweiser brewing contract to C&C), was a dominant player in the lager market in Ireland for decades, but by the 1980s was beginning to lose market share to other lagers, particularly those being brewed by Beamish in Cork (who produced Carling, Miller and at one point, Carlsberg under licence). I am assuming this is what lead to a significant marketing campaign, which most people remember for one line in the TV advert:

"and Sally O'Brien, and the way she might look at you"

Guinness Ltd then decided to see if they could find a case where Sally looked like you, launching a Sally O'Brien lookalike contest, with a regional heat format.

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The contest was launched by Vicki Michelle - the original Sally you needed to look like - in March 1983, with five regional winners to be decided. There was a very strange system where the person who sent in the winning entry won as much as the actual winner for each region, a then substantial £500 (around €1900 currency converted and inflated). Vicki was one of the judges, along with Harp's marketing director, and the award winning creator of the Harp ad, along with other noted Guinness advertising. The overall prize was a trip for two to Hollywood, plus £1000 (€3800).

The contest was heavily advertised in the press, and the regional winners were all pushed in adverts in their regional papers once selected. These winners were:

Dublin: Catherine Keane 

Limerick: Aileen O'Sullivan

Cork: Eileen Galvin

Galway: Geraldine Holmes

Waterford: Deirdre O'Brien

Catherine Keane won the overall award, a quite convincing lookalike based on the photos. Catherine was a teacher in Navan at the time and I presume remained at that profession, rather than becoming a waitress in a French bistro as Vicki Michelle had since become vastly more famous for than for appearing in a beer ad.

 

Evening Herald, May 12th, 1983

Occasional unofficial lookalike contests get organised for various celebrities to this day; but I seriously doubt we'd ever see a brewery doing such a thing again. Indeed, modern regulations (statutory and voluntary alike) on alcohol advertising mean the chances of their being a known named character in an ad to begin with. I also don't think the submitter prize would really wash these days - the women were the stars here, and giving an equal amount to someone else for posting in a photo is at best pointless.

A Quayside Walk (or a history of pubs gone by)

Today - the 29th of December - I had reason to walk back in to city centre from the South Docks, and I popped in to every pub on the way that was open. Which isn't that many. 

But if I'd made the same walk at some point in the past - lets go for for 120 years ago - I would have passed enough that a pint per pub would probably have resulted in my hospitalisation.

The first pub I passed, and entered, is S0153 The Ferryman. This now currently reaches to the corner of John Rogersons Quay and Macken Street; but the corner unit with Macken Street was originally a separate pub. I last have it tracked as Floods in 1907 - while the Ferryman was Dunnes. The Ferryman expanded in to this unit quite some time ago. 

Assuming a mid (19)00s walk, the next pub I am aware that we would have passed was Dunnes at 23 John Rogerons Quay. I have this tracked in the 1910s, but it is gone by the 1943 Thoms listing. 

Not too far along, at 16 John Rogersons Quay, was the Twangman, last tracked by me in 1981. Next door was - and is, in so far as the building still exists - Columbia Mills, at 14-15; and I suspect this may have used the Twangman's licence. This famed nightclub isn't actually that well recorded, but appears as The Waterfront in this 1989 RTÉ footage.

As we keep walking in, we cross the quayside exit of the L-shaped Windmill Lane, the street that named the studios that moved 35 years ago; and then we come across the site of the docklands newest dead pub - The Jolly Roger at 8-11 John Rogersons Quay.

The late 80s/early 90s use of the since replaced buildings on this site was the Riverside Centre, a conference and events centre which contained a private rental only - but fully licenced as a conventional pub - bar called the Jolly Roger. I suspect this is somewhere close to the least recorded modern era pub to have existed in Dublin, albeit I know of some more with even less proof that they ever existed. This wasn't here in a putative 1905 walk, but it should be mentioned.

Almost next door, and only hanging on in our assumed 1905 walk, was Delaneys at number 6. I have tracked this as closing in 1906. However, actually next door to this, we can go in to one of Dublin's rare Lazarus pubs, 1017216 Dockers. This pub existed in the 1900s, as Farrells; and exists now - but was closed for over 15 years and assumed to be doomed to redevelopment. The current pub is twice the width and has a new interior as well as a new licence; but is on the site of a pub that existed in the past, with one of the names it traded under.

This in 2025 results in my second pint, as compared to at least 6 in 1905. We now cross on to City Quay, which has been heavily redeveloped and hence nothing remains of the next three pubs. At 43 would have been Dooleys, at 37 Walshs, and at 33 McEvoys.

The next pub along then was Coles at 24 City Quay, a site that like Colombia Mills before it, was far more important in its latter (and likely last) use as a licenced premises. This was the site of The Funnel, a dance music venue that was very important during its brief life of 1997-1999; but closed for good in 1999.

Continuing along, past the Matt Talbot Bridge that was over seven decades away in 1905, there is Lanigan's pub. Further along, and well in to Georges Quay, we hit Duncans - possibly gone by 1905 - and next door Smith's Shamrock House. We've gone quite a distance without a pint in 2025, versus a further 7 in 1905 (bringing us to 13), before we get to S0022 The Workshop, or Ryan's back then. It was closed today, however, so make that 14 for 2 for 1905.

The next pub we hit would have been Walshes at 4 Georges Quay, which was most latterly known as the Silver Swan. The licence from here was transferred, after its ramshackle tacked-on nightclub was deemed a fire hazard, to a new pub in a converted food factory in Artane. 

That new premises retained the Silver Swan name for it's bar, but used the name Stardust for its large nightclub, a name that should remain etched in to the memories of everyone involved in the pub and entertainment industry in Ireland forevermore. 

 

The next premises we pass was still a pub in the era which I have licencing records for; but I never visited it. Ennis's in 1905, otherwise S0020 The Dark Horse, or the White Horse depending on the specific era you remember it, was a noted indie gig venue that hosted an early Green Day gig and also latterly made good use of its early house licence to host dance music events on Bank Holiday Monday mornings. It closed as a pub less than six weeks before I began this blog, so we end up 17 for 2 at this point. 

We're not done with notable premises just yet. The next pub along would have been The Scotch House then, and the Scotch House until its demise. A notable Irish Press journalist pub, and a striking lump of a building, this pub had vague Joycean connections to add literary connections to its fourth estate credentials. We continue.

Finally, finally, I get another pint. In S0005 JR Mahons - or the Crystal Bar, at the time of our 1905 walk - I can get house branded beers made by Hopkins & Hopkins (but no longer on-site, as they were when I made the visit written up in the link); and sit in a much modified premises that still shows some signs of its age.

S0967 the River Bar effectively next door is a "new" build from the 1960s, and probably a new licence from that time too - Powers (at our era), latterly McDaids White House which sat to the rear of the site presumably gave its licence to the exceptionally low numbered S0007 Soho in the basement of the building behind. This gave me enough reason to not need to include it on this trip - McDaid's didn't open to the quays, and the River Bar wasn't there in 1905!

3 pints for 20. I know which walk I'd have preferred to have done from a historical perspective; but I also know which one my doctor prefers that I did do!

Innification - the (re?)adding of hotel rooms to Dublin's pubs

I've noticed a trend, or at least enough specifics to take note, of Dublin pubs converting their upper floors in to guest accommodation of late

Pubs with rooms - "Inns" in common parlance - are clearly not a new thing, obviously; but weren't actually that common in Dublin. This is despite a number of pubs having Inn in their name, or their trading company name

Some pubs have been doing this for as long as I can remember, for instance S0029 O'Donoghues on Merrion Row has been offering accommodation bookings via their website for over 20 years; and S0031 O'Neills for 25. Additionally, small hotels - purpose built, or converted from large houses, and done deliberately to get around restrictions on opening new bars - were a thing for many decades, something else I intend to write about. 

What I'm seeing now that I believe is a new trend is existing pubs putting in bedrooms. These are frequently, but not exclusively, going in as conversions of the pubs rarely used function rooms or music bar/nightclub spaces. These are features that many pubs had, but few pubs now maintain. Some are converting store rooms, or even extending in to adjacent spaces.

For cases of converting function rooms or other space in to guest rooms, an early enough example is N0214 McGettigans Queen Street, where the "Private Party Lounge" that those of us who used to Luas commute past it over 15 years ago can remember advertised, has been converted to bedrooms

 

Window sign from McGettigans from 2009 Streetview pass 

The former S0067 JJ Smyths, now the Thomas Moore on Aungier Street also added bedrooms before reopening with it's new name. The much missed S1434 57 The Headline is to shortly reopen as the Libertine Lounge and Lodgings. S1762 The Laurels in Perrystown and S0279 Fitzgeralds in Monkstown both also have planning permission for similar works at the moment, with Fitzgerald's commencement notice having gone in during March.

S1473 The Barn House is currently closed, but has recently received permission to add 21 hostel beds to the upper floors, removing the existing function room and one apartment.  The bar and lounge will both be retained.

There are also cases of existing apartments above a pub being offered as guest accommodation as part of the pub offering. One early example - but which I believe is gone now - was "Panti's Pads" above N0191 Pantibar. Other pubs with apartments above that are now rented out for hotel style use include two of Galway Bay Breweries premises - S0080 Bar Rua and S0083 Beer Temple. 

Finally, while we're well aware of pubs (and in particular, nightclubs) being knocked and a hotel replacement being built; there are also cases of where a pub has been retained while a full scale hotel is built around it. 

There's two notable cases of very big hotels - 1015221 Aloft which has basically eaten The Tenters; and the Dublin One Hotel which has done a much better job of retaining N0018 The Big Tree. 

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But there are two proposals - one of which seems to be underway - on the Quays which will be more like an Inn, in so far as the bar will still be large and retained. The repeatedly rejected 1002171 Merchants Arch hotel proposal has been very controversial, but by comparison, the N1066 Bachelor Inn hotel plan has basically gone un-noticed; despite having apparently begun work. This will make the Inn element of the name a bit more apt!

N1833 The Harbourmaster in the IFSC also had a proposal for a large enough hotel replacing some of their existing space; but this was rejected.

Wetherspoons has also converted space in their substantial N2538 Old Borough in Swords in to small (14 bed) hotel. 

How Many Pubs *Are* There In Dublin?

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.

What Is A Pub?

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.

There are also at least two pubs with D15 Eircodes, but are actually in Meath. I don't count these, nor the small number of pubs that are in lands ceded from Dublin to Wicklow.

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.

Not Actually Pubs (or Nightclubs) - Wine and Special Restuarant Licences

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:

Special Restaurant 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.

Wine Retailers On Licence

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.

Why?

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!

Revenue licence numbers - what do they actually mean?

Across this site, and the map, and my own records I make use of Revenue's licence numbers to keep track of what is and isn't a qualifying pub. They are matters of public record and also used in the CC-BY licenced register so there shouldn't be any issues with this; and I can't think of any other system for it. But its not instantly clear how it works to outsiders, and even ten years in this is somewhat of a guess!

Systems:

There are two different numbering systems in use by Revenue:

* Alphanumeric registration for liquor licences alone, issued by licencing court district, used until (approximately) late 2007 

* Sequential numeric National system used since late 2007 - which is used for all excise licences

Alphanumeric

The alphanumeric system appears to have been introduced in the 1970s and applied to existing premises in a roughly geographical basis. You will see sequential numbers for pubs in a single area of the city, and occasionally a "missing tooth" of a number where a pub has closed down, or has been re-numbered for some reason.

There are five legacy areas that have, or had, alphanumeric licences in Dublin - Northside, Southside, Drogheda, Meath (Trim, presumably) and Arklow. There are a significant number of NXXXX and an even higher number of SXXXX licences for the first two, a handful of DgXXXX licences for Drogheda, one for Meath and formerly one for Arklow - these are MhpXXXX and ArpXXXX - the p standing for pub. The solitary Dublin-located yet Arklow licenced pub - Arp0667 Blue Gardenia - has permanently closed.

Clearly the districts do not strictly cover county boundaries - while the Mhp and Arp pubs are very close to the border, the Dg district comes as far south as Loughshinny. The N and S division also does not respect the Liffey, or the postcode even/odd split, with plenty of "Northside" pubs to the south of "Southside" ones out to the West of the city. This, I imagine, covers older district and circuit court boundaries, many of which have been minorly altered over the years as court houses close or other changes are made - and this may have in part lead to the replacement of the old system.

Non-retail types of licences such as restaurant, wholesaler and manufacturers also used this system; with suffices relating to their licence type added to N and S licence numbers, and the "p" for pub swapped out for the same letters in other areas. Bafflingly, their un-suffixed numbers can collide -  S0012 is a pub and S0012SR an unconnected restaurant a number of streets away

Sequential

The national/sequential system gives no indication of where a pub is, but it can sometimes be used to infer when it first opened by comparing to the age of pubs with nearby numbers above or below it.

There are huge gaps in the numbering at times - as this system is used for all excise licences of all types. 1000064 is a pub in Dublin, but 1000065 is the road fuel excise licence for a petrol station in Mayo, for instance. In particular, as entire classes of excise licence have been registered, blocks of numbers have been used at once - much of the 1003/4/5xx blocks are marked fuel (green diesel etc) licences.

I had assumed that these numbers started at 1000000, but a 6 digit number starting with 9 has appeared in some previous registers - this may be a solitary error, and it isn't currently there either.

Renumbering

A licence number is for life, not just for a specific operators time in a pub... except when it isn't. Every year a reasonable handful of premises change licence number.

I can't tell for certain what the rules are for a new number being issued; as some cases of extremely long closure have led to the old number being kept, but I suspect it has to do with redefining the licenced area of a pub - generally if a premises undergoes works which alter this, the number is changed - but this doesn't seem to be consistent. Two pubs near me out in Kildare which have had huge reductions in floor area - conversion of nightclub/function room areas to flats - still have their old system numbers.

A change of licence *type* will usually cause the number to change also, but not if it is a a Hotel (Residents) to Hotel (Ordinary) - a small number of these have appeared with their old number intact, including one where it was on the old system

(work-safe!) Adult Entertainment in Dublin Pubs

It's been a relatively quiet year for new pub openings, compared to the last few anyway. A clear backlog of premises to open from 2020/21 finally opened after the February 2022 lifting of restrictions on pub service; and the pipeline has got a bit short now.

Indeed, I was very surprised at the lack of places opening for Paddys Day this year, although April has picked up a bit with a few. I document the openings of places elsewhere on the site so I'm not going to go through details other than what the purpose of this post is.

Something is quite baffling in that a huge proportion of the new venues opening - and with two exceptions they are actually *new* venues and not reopenings - are effectively activity centres for adults.

As of the time I write this, there are six premises open that match this requirement. Only three of them have turned up on the liquor licence register but I'm fairly confident that all of them are licenced as pubs - it just isn't practical to operate the way they are any other way.

First off we have places that are specific to one sport/game that you can play on the premises, but where you can also drink.

We have two bowling alley / arcade setups, from the British chain Lane7. These are like tiny Leisureplexs, but three times the price. And with a bar - which you do not need to pay for a lane to go in to. I have visited one, on Clarendon Row; and will have to tick off the second branch in Dundrum also, which I believe is larger; and had been intended to be a Press Up branded bowling alley originally.

There is then Flight Club, which is darts based, in the former S3727 Sams Bar. This offers "social darts" which is, as far as I can tell, just darts as you'd play it in any normal pub, but with bookings. You can, again, just go in to the bar without booking. I visited as Sams and I'm terrible at darts, so I won't be back.

The next category is VR based "experiences". One of these is still sports based - 1021725 Pitch - a virtual golf setup where you swing at a screen rather than on actual grass. You can again just go to the bar here.

We then have Sandbox VR, a VR headset setup that looks somewhat terrifying; and has a robot cocktail 'bartender' which you can, again, just head in to get a drink from without paying a minimum of €30 for a VR trip.

The final category of those that are open is "a mix of all of the above". The former Icon Centre at Leopardstown Racecourse has finally reopened as 1021852 Super Social, which has darts, indoor golf (which looks to use real balls), shuffleboard and other activities. The website says you can come in without a booking for activities but I suspect you may be rather encouraged to get a meal rather than just drinks. Super Social is open in the afternoon for under-18s, not common with this type of venue it seems.

Yet to come is a branch of Bounce, a boozy ping pong setup that already exists in the UK. I have no idea whether they'll let you in to their branch in the old Central Bank, when it opens, without a booking as it hasn't opened yet - and their UK website is incredibly opaque about whether they allow it there.

The Incredible Moving Pub(s)

Pubs don't move. Except when they do.

There's been a run in recent months of pub operators moving to a new premises, leaving their old one rather than opening a second branch. There are also cases - recent and more historic - of both the operators and the name moving, or other cases where a pub can make some claim of it's own history on another site. 

The end-2024, early-2025 run of operator moves are interesting as they all involve relatively long moves, but still within the overall area you might consider the pubs traditional catchment.

In March/April 2024, the social media of the recently closed N1116 Clearys in Inchicore was renamed to Tom Tavey, as in N1124 Tom Tavey. This pub had been renamed to The Devils Cut, but had since closed down. And indeed, they are moving in here.

(it's important to note that my visits are points in time and I'm fairly certain that the operator of Clearys when I visited is not the same as those who have just moved to Tavey's - it is 6 years ago) 

Prior to that, the operators of N1195 Lanigans, the previous bar in the Clifton Court Hotel (but not the last one before it's most recent closure) moved in to 1014978 The Wild Duck on Sycamore Street, a return to pub operation closely awaited by some people I know.

Additionally, the operators of 1007228 The Clock took over the recently closed down S1472 Pifko/Pilsner Pub, but renamed it The Liffey Saint 

Clearys->Taveys and The Clock->The Liffey Saint are both ~400m moves; with Lanigans->The Wild Duck being more like 800m.

But what of a pub actually moving? Retaining its name, and potentially some of its atmosphere etc in the process. I've taken note over the years of a few examples, but these won't be comprehensive. And its all still subjective.

One clear example, and the only clear one still trading is the death of S0208 Bernard Shaw, and its resurrection in the up until then N2405 Racket Space, a premises with the same operator. The Racket Space name has been changed to refer to part of the venue only now. A number of these moves crossed the Liffey.

Another case, but one where the new location has since changed, is N2749 Cu Chulainns, Summerhill moving to 1002519 Cu Chulainns of Ongar in Ongar. This has been renamed twice and is now the Ongar House

In times before I have licence numbers, other known moves include the Barnstormers bikers bar moving from Townsend Street (pub since demolished) to Capel Street (now N0084 The Black Sheep); and the famed and ill-fated Irish House pub moving from Wood Quay (since very controversially  demolished) to Grove Road (also since demolished). I'm also aware of at least the name of the Steering Wheel, Bolton Street (since demolished) being moved to S2026 The Steering Wheel, Clondalkin.

There is an edge case amongst still open pubs - after the original John Clarkes in Irishtown (now S0160 Merry Cobbler) was liquidated, the Clarkes eventually took over a nearby pub which now trades as S0158 John Clarkes, and claims a founding date of 1932 - taken from the old pub.

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.

Closed For The Duration - Licenced, but never open, pubs of the last decade

As we enter the tenth calendar year of doing this - I started keeping my spreadsheet and posting writeups in July 2016; although I'd been deliberately trying new pubs out for a while before that - I'm beginning to run out of places to visit.

I've previously written about this, and reduced the frequency of posting, and the end of my writeups of pre-2016 pubs soon will probably lead to a further cut in frequency, although a scavenger hunt of missing writeups has bought a few weeks worth of content.

During those ten years, a number of premises have remained licenced the entire time, but never opened their doors for trade at any point; with a few more where I could have purchased alcohol but would be very unlikely to be allowed consume it on the premises.

There's some mythology that a pub has to be open one day a year to keep its licence, and indeed I've had this repeated to me *by a licence holder* in recent years. This is not correct and I'm not quite sure where it came from. These pubs have held their licence, for far longer than the 5 year lapse period that was introduced in the early 60s; and could in theory reopen - if their fire certs were valid, and in one case, the building even really existed!

I'm going to record those here, with a bit of explanation where possible. Some of these are going to be getting vaguely in to hypothesis, as the future intent for the licences is very unclear.

N0229 Dolly Heffernans, Blanchardstown

Will it be a hotel? Will it be a nursing home? Neither of these proposals has actually progressed, with the hotel plans having first surfaced in 2006. This once rural pub now sits incongruously opposite a large car dealer and within a growing industrial estate.

N1223 Laurence Lounge, Ballyfermot

An early 2000s rebuild, with retail and apartments above, on the site of an older pub; this pub has been shut for the entire period of my interest with no obvious happenings at all

N0202 Millennium, Benburb Street

Planning permission has been refused to replace this pub with suites for the almost adjacent Aisling Hotel

update: Planning granted to convert to a tourist hostel in late 2025. No bar to be retained.

N0877 Phoenix Park Racecourse

This licence appears to be registered to no premises whatsoever, seeing as the remaining pavilion of the Racecourse was demolished a very long time ago. Still held by the developers, my assumption is that is it being kept valid for transfer to a future pub on the development site; although to what building it is assigned currently is a mystery. 

Even after the racecourse had closed, "The END" nightclub in the pavilion continued to operate, but I believe it had closed significantly before the beginning of redevelopment in 2004.

N1097 Conways, Parnell Street

Rotting away, Conways closed in slightly murky circumstances including claims it had "lost its licence", but the licence remains; and the pub will apparently be renovated and reopen if the Dublin Central development ever finishes.

N2152 Barcode, Clontarf

A nightclub that targetted younger (legal age) drinkers, and did the "drink while playing sports" thing that is becoming the theme of 2025, twenty years before. But it remained somewhere I never visited.

Planning troubles contributed to the clubs closure in 2010; and nothing has been heard since - but the licence remains.

S0218 Houricans, Leeson Street

This closed very close to the time that I started the blog, and has remained licenced. At the time of writing this, it is finally up for sale.

S3504 TramCo, Rathmines

There are plans afoot to renovate and rebuild the hotel here and reopen, but this sometimes controversial nightclub still sits empty. Proposals will reduce the space from vast to just a normal hotel bar

Special Category I - off-licences using pub licences

S1349 Spar, Baggot Street - the former Henry Grattan pub, the signage of which appeared during renovation works in 2025.

N0104 Parnell Street Off-Licence - formerly Forum and a variety of other names, this has traded solely as an off-licence for almost 20 years.

Special Category II - Out of action throughout this decade, but visited by me prior

N2030 The Good Bits, Store Street - written up as a NecroReview in January, The Good Bits closed in about 2011; but remains on the licence register to this day

S0398 Dunnes Stores, Blackrock - I visited this when it was a TGI Fridays, but it was closed for an incredibly long time and reopened as a supermarket; with the pub licence now being used for off-sales and maybe wine in the cafe.