Business Insight for What’s Next

"A pint of plain is your only man." — Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds. O'Brien wrote that with his tongue firmly in his cheek. But strip away the mock-heroics and there's a plain truth underneath: the pub has always been more than a place to buy a drink in this country. It's where the parish meets, where the news travels, where the music starts. And right now we are losing them at a rate that should alarm anyone who cares about rural Ireland. This isn't publican folklore. Independent analysis by Anthony Foley, Associate Professor Emeritus of Economics at DCU Business School, found that Ireland had 8,617 pubs in 2005 and 6,498 by 2024 — a loss of 2,119 pubs, down almost a quarter. And it's getting worse, not better: the average had been around 112 closures a year, but in the most recent stretch (2019–2024) that rose to roughly 128 a year, with a further 600 to 1,000 closures projected over the coming decade. The pain is not spread evenly. Dublin has barely moved (down 1.7%). The rest of the country is down nearly 27%, with Limerick, Offaly and Cork hardest hit. This is a rural problem, plain and simple — and the CSO's own figures back it up, with bar sales the steepest-falling part of the entire retail sector in the year to March 2025.