Anyone who has been to anything where alcohol flows freely for the whole day – a wedding, perhaps, or every Thursday at college – will be familiar with the concept of the second wind. It usually hits around 10pm.

It’s when, by rights, you should be tucked up in bed, pint glass of water at the ready. Instead, you’re sliding across the dancefloor on your knees on your way to get another round at the bar. It’s harmless fun, provided you don’t do it too often.

Despite dire warnings from lobbyists for Big Drink, the Irish pub sector has officially hit its post-crash second wind. August’s retail sales figures showed that bar revenues surged 6 per cent, after a 10 per cent rise in July and another 6 per cent in June.

Rural pubs in locations where there aren’t many tourists are still finding it tough, and some struggling pub-owning families will be irked at the notion of a second wind, but on the whole, the sector is in far better shape.

Oliver Hughes, founder of the Porterhouse group, attributed the improving trading environment for pubs to "one thing: the growth in tourist numbers".

“It is incredible the number of tourists who are drinking in pubs. As long as the euro stays weak against the dollar and sterling, then it will continue,” he said.

Hughes wouldn’t spill, but there is a rumour that the Porterhouse group is planning a new brewery combined with an enterprise hub for small businesses in Glasnevin, in Dublin. Locals will certainly raise a glass to that.

John Ryan, a director of the pub and hotel division of property group CBRE, confirmed pub asset prices are also increasing, especially in city centres: "The feelgood factor is back. The country pubs market is still challenged, but where there is tourism, it is okay."

Louis Fitzgerald, whose pub group is the largest in the State with properties such as the Poitín Still and the Stag's Head in Dublin, said a shift towards food sales has helped his businesses improve their performance.

“We have changed the way we do things. We aim now for 50/50 sales between food and drink in many of our pubs. Many publicans have begun to change the way they do things. We have to make things happen ourselves,” he said.

Meanwhile, the pub industry’s version of the reunification of Germany – the merging of the Dublin-based Licensed Vintners’ Association with its country cousin, the Vintners’ Federation of Ireland – will complete within weeks.

That’s one bar extension that makes perfect sense...