Smoking ban hits Irish pubs too
Wednesday, September 15, 2010 Forest Eireann has just issued a press release commenting on the Smoking Gun report commissioned by the Save Our Pubs & Clubs campaign and widely reported in the Scottish media last week. It follows a report, reported by the Irish media this week, that "The pub trade is experiencing a 'meltdown' with sales down by more than 14 per cent in the first seven months of the year" .
The story was based on figures from the Drinks Industry Group of Ireland whose group secretary talked about ongoing “cost pressure” generated by government-related costs such as commercial rates and regulation.
Forest Eireann's press release informs us that:
Using data from the Revenue Commissioners, researchers found that the number of pub losses demonstrate a very close statistical relationship between the introduction of the smoking ban in 2004 and the rapid decline of the Irish pub ...
Analysis of statistics set out in the Statistical Report on the Revenue website showed that Ireland lost 1,097 pubs in the four years immediately following the ban.
Researchers found a striking similarity between the rate of closures in Ireland following the ban, and those in Scotland, England and Wales following theirs – despite considerable differences between the pub traditions.
Full press release HERE. I have posted a comment on the Forest Eireann blog and would welcome your comments HERE.
Reader Comments (3)
Nah, can't be true. ASH said it would increase trade! Ask them to check their figures, there must be a mistake.
Pubs today are wonderful places. There are 2 types left, one always guarantees a seat, perfect peace and tranquillity, uninterrupted by people wanting to talk to you, plenty of space, you could even hold a retreat in them. Take advantage whilst they're still around!. The second type is full of kids shouting and screaming, animals running all over, toddlers sat on the bar, mothers focused on their mobiles pretending to be popular, overpriced gunge masquerading as 'food' and all served by sour faced staff just out of nappies.
Lovely!. Well done the smoking ban.
Simon, is there any chance you could post a link to the Smoking Gun report without white spaces in the pdf file name. The reason why I ask is because the white space can be lost in translation when linked in embedded hyper-links from other sites. For example the link "report" on VGIF to the smoking gun report does not work and returns "page not found" on the taking liberties server. So for example instead of "Smoking Gun.pdf" use "SmokingGun.pdf"
Done. Thanks for the tip.