The word “jobs” is a password for permission to do as you please here. People win elections just by repeating the word. Large US corporations are allowed to run rings around tax laws just by promising jobs.
Over the next five years the British pub chain JD Wetherspoon intends to open 30 outlets across the State, spending about €50 million. Although Wetherspoon won’t be selling snow to Canadians or sand to the Saudis any time soon, it is selling its version of the pub to the Irish.
With 931 pubs in the UK, Wetherspoon is a gigantic company that employs more than 34,000 staff. It has opened the Three Tun Tavern in Blackrock, Co Dublin, to much curiosity and in Dún Laoghaire took over the Forty Foot, a Celtic Tiger-era bar whose fortunes had waned in recent times.
Wetherspoon has been at the centre of a brouhaha (or brewhaha) with drinks companies as its model is based on cheap prices. Two dominant drinks companies loom large in Irish pubs: Heineken and Diageo. Wetherspoon will cut the taps from those brands and sell other drinks instead. At the Forty Foot, pints of English stout cost €2.50.
The company’s latest drive in the State is part of a broader expansion programme and it will open 200 new pubs in Britain and Ireland. It says this will create 15,000 jobs. That sounds like a lot if you divide it up: 75 staff per boozer. The last thing Ireland needs is a pub chain but we love jobs and if Wetherspoon can supply them there probably won’t be much opposition to its expansion here.
Heritage in jeopardy
Pub heritage isn’t exactly intrinsic to the suburbs of south Dublin but it is to Ireland. Wetherspoon plans to open two more venues in the Dublin suburbs next and then outlets in Cork and Waterford. It is also opening a 100-room hotel on Camden Street. Some 1,350 jobs are pencilled in to support its Irish plans.
It’s often difficult to feel sympathy for publicans, a powerful lobby with deeply entrenched political connections. Pubs had it easy for a long time but the industry is shedding.
The Vintners’ Federation of Ireland’s constant hand-wringing and béal bochting is pretty off-putting for anyone who has ever had to endure the uncomfortable springs of a pub couch with fabric steeped in body odour and fag ash, or the flat taste of a gin and tonic made up of 50 per cent ice-bucket water. But Irish pubs can also be magical.
Fáilte Ireland’s 2013 visitor attitudes survey lists the top five experiences mentioned by overseas visitors. The first was “listened to live music in a pub”, the third was “tasted a Guinness”.
If you want to talk about jobs you can’t deny the economic benefit of the traditional Irish pub. The pubs are one of our biggest draws.
You might feel slightly sad that the main attraction to Ireland involves sitting on an old stool and supping a pint – and it’s true that the idea of craic has been cringingly commodified. However, it’s a fact that people come here to experience our pubs and that they are also places beloved of natives.
So shouldn’t we be slightly cautious about an English chain buying pub venues and selling cheap booze?
Before Wetherspoon opens its string of pubs here – and there’s no stopping it now, really – shouldn’t we be asking ourselves if we want to preserve the special cultural, atmospheric and design status of Irish pubs, with their pokey snugs, bar staff who can pull stout properly, music sessions that are as spontaneous as they are familiar, thick wooden bar counters, quality hand-painted signage and branded mirrors that should be naff but can be beautiful?
Our local main streets have already been destroyed by an unchecked proliferation of banal shopfronts. Every street feels the same: Zara, H&M, Boots, River Island, McDonald’s. Local cafes with character are squeezed out by Starbucks in stereo to the point that there are streets in Dublin now with an outlet on either side.
Our towns have become outdoor versions of airport departure lounges: a Costa, a Boots, a Claire’s Accessories. We have little in the way of unique retail any more, just chains of shops you can find in any European city interrupted by an endless constellation of Spars.
Cut-price alcohol
As for the cheapness of alcohol at Wetherspoon outlets, why is this being met with no opposition? There has been a national conversation for decades about excessive consumption of alcohol, a level of consumption that is directly linked to its cost.
Why was (albeit ineffective) legislation introduced to curb the sale of cut-price alcohol during “happy hour” if it’s perfectly okay for Wetherspoon to sell a pint for €2.50?
We have a problem with valuing what we have in Ireland.
We may have conflicting feelings about the place of the pub in our society. It’s a wonderful place to gather, yet it is also imprinted on the national consciousness as the setting of an age-old alcoholism problem. In spite of this, the cultural uniqueness of the Irish pub should be protected and preserved.Now that would be something worth toasting.