Northside Shopping Centre ‘Welfare Wednesday’ pub closes

Liz Delaney’s pub has ceased trading with the loss of all the staff members’ jobs

Remember Liz Delaney’s pub in the Northside Shopping Centre, the home of the controversial “Welfare Wednesday” drinks promotion for the unemployed? Unfortunately, it ceased trading this week and the staff lost their jobs.

The company that ran the pub, which was still known to many as The Blacker, had been in talks with its bankers, according to its accounts.

In January the pub was at the centre of a storm in a pint glass, as one writer quipped, over the drinks promotion dreamed up by publican Gary Payne. The nosey middle classes of Dublin leapt on their high horses and Payne felt compelled to go on Morning Ireland to apologise, given the opprobrium.

Laughably, the pub was later rapped by the Advertising Standards Authority after a complaint from Alcohol Action Ireland. The charge? Not having a "sense of responsibility to society".

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Are working-class people not allowed out for a pint? Such was the bang of snobbishness from the disapproving mob. Anyway, they’re all out of work now.

Welfare promotion, indeed.