Did you know that 2,205 pubs closed between 2005 and 2025? In 2000, there were 522 nightclubs across the State for people to ring in the new millennium; today, there are 83. What has happened to Ireland’s once reasonably vibrant night-time economy?
If the young population had collapsed, it would be easier to understand. However, in 2000, there were 312,757 people between the ages of 20-24 in Ireland; there are now 339,458, an 8.5 per cent increase, yet nine out of 10 late-night venues have disappeared. Ireland is Europe’s most dynamic economy yet the night-time economy is moribund.
We pride ourselves on being a nation of talkers, storytellers, drinkers, musicians and craic merchants, yet it is extremely difficult to stay out chatting in any sort of premises after midnight. We are a country that, through Ryanair, has revolutionised air travel, yet we have no Darts running after midnight, a skeleton night bus service in Dublin and, apart from one route in Cork, no public transport in any city or town after 11pm. How can an industry that depends on transport survive?
Last year 86 pubs closed, up from 65 the previous year but down from 117 in 2023. The average closure rate has been 110–112 pubs a year over 20 years, but this accelerated to 128 a year between 2019 and 2024. A recent study, commissioned by the Drinks Industry Group of Ireland, predicted a further 600–1,000 closures over the next decade.
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Granted, there are lifestyle reasons behind these trends, but although people may be drinking less, they still want to go out. Every other European society is experiencing similar trends, but none have seen their night-time economies collapse like Ireland’s. If you have just come back from a European summer holiday, you know what I am talking about.
The main reason for the death of the night-time economy is regulation that makes it almost impossible to open anything, rendering new business prohibitively expensive, requiring publicans, club promoters and restaurateurs to raise prices, squeezing already straitened customers. The nation of raconteurs has been rendered silent by a nanny state that treats adults like children and puts the interests of a tiny few above the interests of the majority.
The main instrument the nanny state uses to limit people having fun is the ubiquitous licence – the official permission demanded by the State – to open a bar or a club. Licences exist to protect the interests of the existing licence holders, keeping competition at bay. In so doing, the licence system blocks innovation because it is a barrier preventing young people from opening new late-night spaces.
Ireland’s licensing system is an unruly mess of around 100 laws, some more than 200 years old, and 60 per cent of them originate in the UK, predating the foundation of the State. The foundational framework dates from 1833. Irish nightclub legislation is still based on the 1935 Public Dance Halls Act, which almost quaintly was introduced during a moral panic. Fearing the corruption of Irish youth, the Catholic hierarchy ran an “anti-jazz campaign” against dance halls, condemning jazz as foreign music “borrowed from the savages of the islands of the Pacific”.
This legislation made it almost impossible to hold a dance without the sanction of local clergy, guards and judiciary. Éamon de Valera personally endorsed the campaign in a letter of support. The clergy built parish halls to house the newly licensed dances, and – in a magnificent twist – the Church and the State split a 25 per cent tax on every ticket sold. Nightlife was treated as a revenue stream for Ireland – a shakedown – even when we were discouraging it.
These days the influence of the Church on nightlife is gone but the instinct to control, prohibit and admonish is alive and well. There is a licence that requires an actual court appearance to get a nightclub open late. This licence, the Special Exemption Order, requires a District Court application, a €205 fee, notice to the Garda and other parties, and evidence the premises has CCTV – just for a single night’s late opening. Of course, this nonsense limits the incentive to get involved in the business in the first place.
All these restrictions have the effect of raising prices (and for many young people a night out is prohibitive) and yet the demand for music and gigs is still huge. Dublin City Council’s Night-Time Economy Advisor said that more than three million tickets for concerts, festivals and live entertainment were sold in Ireland in 2025, a figure expected to grow again this year. Non-alcoholic beers, wines and spirits are also rising in popularity, but you need somewhere to drink these too. The demand to have a good time, either soberly or with a few drinks, is still there. The problem is supply.
The restrictive system, which seems to be based on some bizarre urge to control, enriches the people who already have licences, and penalises those who want to get into the business and experiment. Meanwhile Irish kids are locked out of experiences considered the norm in most other countries.
One of the iron laws of macroeconomics is called the paradox of aggregation, which explains how what is good for the individual is not always good for the collective. So the pub or liquor licence protects the interest of the existing licence holders but penalises everyone else: the potential new publican and the thousands of youngsters who want somewhere new to go. In Ireland, to get a new licence you must buy an old one. Why? This means there is a secondary market for licences, which are now trading at between €60,000 and €65,000. This is a tax on innovation, where the young innovative operator is held hostage by the failing older publican. Again, what is good for the individual isn’t good for the community.
Similarly, think about the madness of Irish synchronised closing hours. Originally this was brought in due to pressure from the Garda to make public order easier to manage. However, what happens in reality is that scores of young people spill out of bars, and from those clubs that still exist, at the same time, meaning more not fewer people on the streets and increasing the likelihood of mass disorder. Great for fast-food joints, bad for everyone else.
Another problem is that anyone, including existing licence holders, can object to someone acquiring an old licence and moving it to a busier place, again squashing competition and innovation. Once more, what is good for the individual is not good for the collective.
A modern economy, like modern society, is increasingly a 24/7 phenomenon, yet Ireland is terrorised by Victorian legislation, policed zealously by moral guardians intent on admonishing rather than encouraging. Is it any surprise many of our 20-somethings are leaving?
A lack of nocturnal options isn’t the main reason for youngsters hightailing it out of the country, but the death of the night-time economy is yet another reason to split.
