Stabbing Away At The Heart Of Irish Culture

The news is enough to make you cry in your pint--if you can find a bar still open for business.

If the reports are correct, the quaint rural Irish pub will soon be dead and gone.

The Sunday Business Post reports that 600 pubs have closed in Ireland over the last two years. The Dublin paper cited skyrocketing overheads.

"There are varying reasons for these closures – retirement, realising value of licence or property. However, for many small rural pubs they simply could not survive against spiralling overheads," said VFI president Seamus O’Donoghue.

The VFI said that according to a study undertaken by IBEC for the period 2004-2005, waste collection charges increased by 23.2%; local authority charges by 20.5% and water charges by 21%. The cumulative average inflation over the same period was 4.8%.

The Western People last week looked at the high number of pub closures in their neck of the woods and offered different reasons for the cancer eating away at tradition of the local public house.

The fact that people are now drinking more at home because of the smoking ban and cheaper alcohol prices in off-licences are being blamed on the high number of closures.

According to the newspaper, County Mayo has the third highest number of pub closures in the country over the last two years with 48 bars shuttered for good. Mayo is behind only Galway with 57 closures and Cork with 74.