Mark Paul: Irish pubs will be changed forever by the pandemic

What did a typical night out for Irish people look like prior to the pandemic? The correct answer, of course, is that there was no such thing as a typical night out. It varied hugely depending on factors such as age and family status, where you live, your income and how bold you felt on a given evening.

But sometimes it is reasonable to make certain generalisations. Most Irish people’s idea of a night out would typically have included a visit to a licensed premises, such as a pub. Not always, of course – drink does not always have to be at the heart of everything. But often in Ireland, it is.

It is no longer hyperbolic to suggest that unless the pandemic fizzles out soon, the concept of the Irish pub as we know it could be under real threat

An Irish night out before Covid typically included a pub, and a night “out out” included several of them, followed by mangled dancing. When is the last time you were out out, and when do you expect to be able to do it uninhibited again?

We are 22 months into a pandemic that has jammed its fun-busting tentacles into every orifice of society. As well as killing close to 6,000 people and presenting us with a financial bill that will top €50 billion, Covid has also thrown a leaden weight upon our social interactions. Few other parts of the economy have borne the strain of this more than our near 7,000 pubs.

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It is no longer hyperbolic to suggest that unless the pandemic fizzles out soon, the concept of the Irish pub as we know it could be under real threat. Either the majority of them won’t survive until the end, or those that do will find themselves struggling to trade in a market that has changed forever.

How much longer does the crisis have left to run? Six months? 12? Certainly it will last for well over two years from end to end, and far longer than that if we meet another variant shock. That is easily long enough for new habits to become ingrained into social behaviour.

Many of us crave the sort of nights out we had before Covid. But over the longer term, it seems reasonable to predict that we may have less of them. A multi-year global pandemic is an epoch-defining event. Societies and people won’t come out the other side of it without changing.

On nights out in future, enough of us are likely to seek out better ventilation and thinner crowds for it to shift the landscape for Irish pubs, which once were typically packed and heaving.

In the meantime, it is all about survival. The Government’s financial supports for the sector have staved off a mass of insolvencies. But the sector can’t live forever on the dole. Eventually, State financial assistance must be withdrawn and only then will the pub sector be able to truly feel where it hurts. Learning to walk again without State assistance will be difficult.

The Covid Restrictions Support Scheme (CRSS), which pays businesses up to 10 per cent of pre-Covid weekly turnover, has been revived to allow hospitality operators such as pubs trade at up to 40 per cent of typical business levels and still claim support. It is due to finish at the end of January, along with the 8pm closing time edict. What then?

Let us assume the numbers of people requiring acute hospital care remain stable as the post-Christmas lag of new infections washes through. Will the Government be prepared to take the political risk at the end of January of fully reopening the hospitality sector while cases, even if they are declining, are still at 5,000-10,000 or more per day? It ought to, but it might not.

The sector has been screaming out for months for a long-term plan from the Government that would allow operators to trade in a climate of stability without the incessant fear of stop-start restrictions. But the hard answer to this is that it may not be possible to devise such a strategy, because the pandemic keeps changing and laying waste to all plans.

I suspect there won’t ever be a long-term Irish strategy for living with Covid, only short-term flexible tactics. It won’t be a change in planning that brings about a more stable operating environment for businesses such as pubs, it will be a change in attitude: the Government eventually may look to the UK which has taken more risks and now seems to be getting away with it, and follow suit.

That has always suited Irish people – we like our pubs to be independent and brand-free

For as long as there is social distancing and any hint of a public health threat – and who knows for how long that will be – the trading environment for pubs will be difficult. For as long as the environment is difficult, the State will try to keep pubs afloat. And the longer that goes on, the more changed the sector will be once all this is over.

One of the enduring features of the Irish pub industry over the decades has been the remarkably low level of corporatisation. There are a very few multi-unit operators with any scale in the market. Paddy McKillen Jnr's Press Up group has little more than a dozen pure pubs, the Louis Fitzgerald group has about 16, and the Mercantile group has eight or nine.

There are other successful publicans, such as Alan Clancy, who own portfolios of pubs. But there are almost no operators of scale running anything close to a chain of venues here.

That has always suited Irish people – we like our pubs to be independent and brand-free. As socialising changes through the pandemic, requiring investment from pubs to keep up, it will be interesting to see how well this holds.

The UK-owned JD Wetherspoon chain, which has nine pubs in the Irish market, says it plans to open 30 outlets here. But it has been saying that for years and has never really made any decisive move to build scale here, although its recent €27 million investment in a hotel in Dublin suggests it isn’t going away.

Wetherspoon had the perfect opportunity to pick off insolvent Irish pubs after the last crash a decade ago, but it sat on its hands until it was too late. The washout after Covid might be its last best chance to seize ground and build an operation of true scale in Ireland.

If it does, and it is successful, who is to say that others international chains won’t follow it here? That really would change the Irish pub market forever.