Reflecting on Irish culture, we got chatting about the extent to which a problem drinker can be assimilated into Irish society before being found out. Or, if he has been found out, he is carried along by the crowd and it’s not seen as a big problem. ‘It’s looked on as an acceptable thing to get pissed in Ireland and nobody really is going to say anything to you. People talk about it and say things like “I got hammered last night on twenty pints” very openly. On Mondays, you see the guys coming in and talking about their weekend and they don’t see it as a problem. In rural Ireland, what do you do if you’re not going to the pub drinking?
‘I think, especially, men living alone use the pub for company. What other social outlet do they have? If they’re men of a certain age, and they’re not into sport or gone beyond it and don’t have a partner, where are they going to go to meet people? There aren’t very many places. Most of our clientele have no other outlets, I would say. If you are a farmer, for example, and don’t have a workplace, or you might be working with one other guy or driving a digger all day, what are you going to do for a social outlet, to meet people?’
That idea of community, which the owner had remarked on earlier, is something fast disappearing in rural Ireland. From declining corner shops to voluntary sports, the individualisation of Irish society is fuelling changing social trends. Perhaps this is why the problem drinker is now more noticeable and a lot less camouflaged by the rest of drinking society. During the Celtic Tiger years especially, not as many people were into hanging about bars all day long when there was a few handy bob to be made. Others were determined to have their Chardonnay on their own decking, no matter how cold it got. They had new kitchens and stereo units to show off, in houses which they were paying through the teeth for.
‘One guy who lived in the village, and was in his thirties, used to come out four or five nights a week. The Guards had been putting people off the road all week and I think maybe three people had been stopped at one point. It was a Tuesday night, one of the quietest I ever put down, and there was one guy in the lounge and one in the bar. This local said, “For Christ’ sake, I come out to meet people, this is my social outing!” He likes a few drinks but mainly he comes out to meet people. But the other side of that, of course, is that it can be a problem when that becomes a way of life and you are used to meeting people every night.
‘For some people, they might have three drinks and come in to meet the lads. The core group of drinkers are like a mini-family—they don’t have any other person to talk to besides themselves. Sometimes the conversation is quite superficial; they’re having a laugh or the craic and chatting about their day and that. They’re quite connected in a way and there is a friendship there. They would look out for each other. I only see that now and I wouldn’t have seen that before I was working. Nighttime drinking is different because couples are out and so on. Any of the daytime guys around at night would be chatting to lots of different people around them and it’s a different conversation at nighttimes. The type of person who becomes a problem drinker is hard to classify—I think a lot of the time these people are lacking in self-confidence and it’s a crutch rather than enjoyment—it’s something they actually need. They need to have about four or five drinks before they’re even comfortable in a social situation. That’s not the case with everybody but with some of them. I do think a lot of them are very timid at the back of it. They can’t actually function socially without the drink.’
I ask the same question I asked the owner—does she feel she is conflicted and fuelling the problems of many of her regulars by supplying them with alcohol?
‘There is a conflict there, to be honest with you. My husband would look after a lot of guys. He would cut down on the spirits they were drinking or make sure they get home all right or whatever. But, say the guy we don’t serve spirits to, he goes in and gets them in town and then he comes back to us at certain times of the day. People are going to get drink if they want to, no matter where. But you do sometimes feel like saying stuff. Like when guys are telling you their problems. One guy suffers from mental health issues, and you nearly feel like saying, “Can you not see it’s the drink?” That’s not my job, in a way. My job is to listen to them and they don’t want me to tell them that. I can opt out. You can kind of bring up the subject. There was a lady who used to drink in there all day Monday. Her child was in the house having come back from school and would often beg the mother to come home. I used to say to my husband, “How can you stick it?” Having the child in the bar pleading for the mother to come home and she wouldn’t budge. As it happens, now she drinks at home all the time. So people will do that regardless. There was another guy who used to come into us and he had quite a drink problem. He was a young married guy. His wife eventually rang the Guards and he was warned not to be around drinking and driving. He just moved on to another village. The sad part of that is that the Guards would have said he was violent to her when he went home and we never would have seen that side of him in the pub. He moved on to another place and didn’t solve his problems.
‘I remember another guy and his wife rang my husband and said, “Would you do me a favour and just bar him for one month?” He said, “I will.” So when he came in as usual my husband said, “Sorry you’re barred for one month.” He said “Fair enough,” and after the month, the wife was my husband’s best friend. She said she didn’t know where he was or how he was coming home. He still drank, so there’s a way of being with people and of handling situations. I would have been quite removed from that when I was working in the office; now I can see the whole story and you do get attached to people. There are very few coming in that I do not like. Most of the people you’d love if they’d sort out their problems, but they’re not going to solve them in the pub and I don’t think a publican is going to sort their problems either.’
One thing I noticed in my time at the bar was very few under-25s were drinking with the regulars or in their own groups. The normal rites of passage in a rural village, whereby youngsters would be brought into the bar in their late teens for a drink, seemed to be missing. What this meant in effect was that those youngsters in the village drinking were doing so away from adult supervision. Many had told me that drugs were now a feature of village life, and with cheaper drink available in off-licences and supermarkets, the current generation were turning their backs on a traditional night out. Back seats of Honda Civics had become their lounge bars.
‘We would have some people in their twenties come in,’ said the bar worker, ‘but they generally come out at weekends. They might come in for a few drinks and then go to town and go clubbing or whatever. The eighteen to twenty-one age group don’t come in, really. They are drinking but they don’t come in to us. They’re mainly doing drugs. There’s only one guy in the village that comes in for a pint from that age group and the rest of them are all doing drugs. They smoke weed and are buying drink in places like Lidl and drink in cars and do whatever drugs they’re doing. One of the guys, a father of one of them, was saying, “I wish they would come in because I’d know what they’re doing.”
‘When they do come in, it’s all shots and vodka. We notice on long weekends or nights of parties or big nights such as Stephen’s Night and that, when they do come in, they go through huge amounts of vodka. It used to be all those alcopops. The way I see them drinking is that they start off pretty okay. They might be having a bottle of Smirnoff Ice or WKD or Bulmers, and then it would come a certain time in the night and it’s shots. They would get through a serious amount. Just “One, Two, Three,” and go. They’d spend huge amounts. Vodka and Red Bull is the big thing at the end of the night.
‘To be honest, girls are more into the shots than the guys. The guys still actually drink pints but at the end of the night they will have a vodka and Red Bull. They might do a few shots but with girls the object of the game is to get as many shots as you can into you if they’re going clubbing or whatever. It’s a ridiculous way to drink and a lot of the tim
e you pour more stuff down the sink after. What I see now, that I never saw before, is that people will say, “Can I have three vodkas and a Red Bull?” And you return with three glasses and they’ll say, “No, can I have a pint glass and throw in the three!” We would never have drank like that. Nobody would even have had a double! The pub experience is central to Irish life, though, and I would like to think it’s safe enough for another generation. We hope, anyway!’
——
Following my visits to the bar in Tipperary I was beginning to wonder if we were indeed moving towards a more café-orientated culture than we sometimes give ourselves credit for. It was clear that rural bars have changed significantly in Ireland and some are having to adapt and change with the times. So could another type of social experience take root here? What about a bar without beer, for instance? It would never work, would it? From the outside of the Carrig Rua Hotel in Dunfanaghy, County Donegal, everything seemed normal enough. The site is at the end of the once bustling fishing port, offering commanding views of the surrounding area, including Killahoey Strand, where a US Air Force Flying Fortress landed in 1943 after running out of fuel. Across the bay is Horn Head, a natural heritage area, offering the village protection from the worst of the Atlantic seas. The 23-bed hotel, which had been closed for a number of years, is now expanding in line with the majestic views around. Like many former fishing ports, the town was slow to adapt its business model from trawlers to tourists. While Dunfanaghy has always attracted a certain number of regional tourists, its proximity to Donegal Airport (40 kilometres away) is expected to see the town attract far more foreign visitors and re-ignite commercial activity in the area.
Against this background, Ann Sweeney took over the running of the Carrig Rua Hotel in 2008, having already owned and operated a successful restaurant, bar and shop in the town. Two days into her new venture, though, Gardaí raided the premises and removed all alcoholic stock. Delays in transferring the bar licence from the previous owners to the new management meant that the hotel had been operating without a bar licence since its opening. With 46 employees, mostly local, working at the hotel, and hefty weekly outgoings, things looked bleak for Ann and her staff. Surely a hotel without alcohol would be doomed to failure in a country where the average annual consumption of pure alcohol per person is 13.4 litres, well above the EU average. Or would it?
Ann Sweeney takes up the story: ‘We opened up the bar on the understanding that the licence was close to being transferred, and that turned out not to be the case at all.
‘On Monday 7 July, at 7.15 p.m., two sergeants and two big vans came and all our alcohol was confiscated from the premises. Many of the staff here had worked for me previously and after the raid I was sitting here thinking, “What am I going to do?”—some of these staff had given up jobs to come and work for me.’ After two days’ meditation, Ann says she came upon an idea. ‘I have a bar nearby, and following government legislation in relation to drink-driving and smoking, the rural pub trade has been decimated. So I thought, why not look at things another way and perhaps there is now a market for an entirely different experience.’
And so, on 17 July 2008 the Carrig Rua Hotel opened its doors as Ireland’s first alcohol-free hotel, inviting Kerry Councillor Michael Healy-Rae to do the honours. At the opening, he remarked that there was ‘much talk and little real action in Ireland in addressing the problem of alcohol abuse’. The Gardaí, he said, ‘have unwittingly provided an opportunity to demonstrate if we are mature enough to be comfortable with the idea of a hotel that provides good quality accommodation and food without having to have an endless supply of booze on tap for its patrons’.
So how does it all work out? Visiting last year, hotel staff were at pains to talk up the positives of working in a dry hotel. Raucous singsongs have been replaced with one-on-one life-coaching sessions, nature walks are being promoted and encouraged, and afternoon salsa classes are growing in numbers, even among staff.
In the bar itself, I found manager Stephen Ferry from Letterkenny training a new staff member on how to make the perfect skinny latte, while a newly installed Slush Puppie machine whirred away in one corner. Herbal teas have replaced high-end whiskeys and smoothies are the new shots. Several alcohol-free beers are on offer, as well as red, white and rosé wines. Ginger beer and homemade lemonade inhabit the fridges. For the non-drinker, it’s sort of like going back into the garden and giving Adam a proper heads-up before he bites into the apple. The only problem, though, is that it was 7.40 p.m. on a Tuesday night and the place was empty.
‘A pregnant lady was in earlier,’ said Mr Ferry. ‘She liked the fact that she could come into a bar where she didn’t feel under pressure to take a drink. She could sit here with her kids and not see people drinking or falling around the place.’ With homemade pastries dotted along the counter, the bar had now rebranded itself as a continental-style café, open from nine in the morning until 10 at night. Diners in the hotel restaurant were allowed to bring wine with them, albeit with a hefty €7.50 corkage fee per bottle. ‘The response so far has been very good,’ said Ferry. ‘Often when people go to a restaurant they are stuck with what [is] on the wine list, but here in this hotel they can bring their own. Of course, we do have some customers who come into the bar and ask for alcohol and there is a look of fright on their faces when I have to say we have none.’
As the evening progressed, locals began to wander into the bar area, attracted by well-known folk singer Roy Arbuckle from Derry, who set up on stage. One couple, Séamus and Betty McQuade, ordered a large pot of tea and sat near the door. Both were teetotallers, and had been coming to the area for over 30 years. ‘We never drank or smoked in our lives,’ says Séamus, ‘and it’s enjoyable to come in to a bar like this without the hassle of people knocking glasses against you and being rowdy and noisy. I’ve nothing against drink, but it can get out of hand. Even though people can bring wine in here, it’s not the same as people drinking spirits. That’s when things really get out of hand.’
The couple say it’s hard to get tea after 9 p.m. in most bars, so the Carrig Rua duly obliges. One local, with a foot in both camps, arrives with a bottle of wine in one hand and a bottle of Ballygowan in another. Others arrive in the bar after dinner, including Charlie and Kate Hill, finishing off their bottle of wine before switching to alcohol-free rosé for the rest of the evening. Once the band starts, the atmosphere is not unlike any other hotel bar, and whilst the staff are not run off their feet, they’re not exactly standing around either. By 10 p.m., the bar has filled up, and during a break, the singer Roy Arbuckle remarks that he could get used to playing to a sober crowd. ‘It’s not that unusual,’ he says. ‘The great folk tradition of the sixties in New York came out of coffee houses. I suppose in our culture we have grown up over generations thinking that pubs are patrons of the arts, such is the link between traditional music and drink. In terms of atmosphere, I prefer when it is sober—people are more inclined to be attentive to the music rather than drink and themselves.’
Next morning, Ann Sweeney breezed through the lobby, taking names for a music workshop she had organised for that afternoon. There are plans to open children’s playrooms and an old-style games room at the back of the hotel and at the time she was also considering hiring more staff; such has been the demand since opening.
‘It’s amazing, we will have five waiters in the bar today as well as a manager and they will be flat out doing coffees and latte and herbal teas all day,’ she says. ‘Our takings are roughly the same.’ She says she has taken enquiries from AA groups and alcohol treatment centres looking to book in. Three weeks in, and the hotel has yet to take out a single advert. The premises has proven especially popular with young families, who would not normally be allowed have their children on a licensed premises after 9 p.m., while the evolving range of events on offer in the bar helps keep everyone occupied.
She’s now not pushed on getting her licence back. If things continue to develop, she may not need i
t. ‘The ironic thing’, she says, en route to meet a lady about reiki classes, ‘is that over the bank holiday weekend, the café here in the hotel took in double what my licensed premises around the corner took in. So why change a successful business model?’ I thought I’d seen the future, folks, and it was looking fizzy.
Two months after my visit, during a local jazz festival, Ann Sweeney learned that her licence had been renewed. That same day she restocked her shelves—the very same day! I called her months later to get an update on how business was going and she informed me. I felt cheated. What about all the AA groups she said were booked in? All the families and non-drinkers delighted with the premises and a chance to socialise without alcohol? Alas, as soon as the authorities gave the official okay, Ireland’s first booze-free bar was no more. It hardly stood a chance. While Sweeney may now claim that the ‘bar is more of a café with the emphasis on food and music’, it is in essence no different to any other hotel bar in Ireland. So much for new beginnings.
‘We were faced with a dilemma when the licence returned. I still believe we would have been able to continue, but perhaps not in the off-season. Now that we have our licence back, next summer I don’t intend to take the alcohol out of the bar. It wouldn’t make economical sense,’ Sweeney said when we spoke. The publicity from being Ireland’s first booze-free bar, for a short time at least, will do the hotel no harm in the long run.
For non-drinkers, the revolution, it seems, will not be soberised.
Frances Black, Singer
For me it’s the shame and stigma that is attached to addiction in this country is actually the thing that stunts the growth of people recovering. Addiction thrives on secrecy and Ireland is still a secret society. I don’t think that’s changed in the recent past, and I think the issue of addiction is absolutely huge. You might get more people aware of it, because of the celebrity rehab culture, where celebrities are talking very openly about their experience. This might lead to a little more discussion about addiction issues, but not much.
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