The capital gains as Leeside loses 50pc of its pubs
THE long-running rivalry between Dublin and Cork took a new twist yesterday when it emerged that the capital is taking pubs from the southern city.
Dublin's booming hotel, pub and off-licence sector has been achieved by a haemhorraging of drink licences out of other areas, particularly in Cork.
The law whereby one pub licence must be "extinguished" before another pub or hotel bar can be opened has led to a situation where the number of pubs in Cork city has dropped by over 50pc in the past 20 years.
Cork city currently has an estimated 250 pubs - down from around 400 in the mid-1980s. The decline in pub numbers is even more stark in Cork county, where an estimated 1,000 pubs now remain - down from between 1,800 and 2,000 pubs just 20 years ago.
Rural parts of Waterford, Tipperary and Limerick have also been affected as Dublin's pub boom continues.
Con Dennehy, former chief of the Vintners' Federation of Ireland in Cork, said that while pub numbers have declined in all parts of Ireland, Leeside has been particularly badly hit.
"It really has been the end of an era here in Cork. Parts of the city that would historically have had a dozen or so pubs now have possibly one or two left. Some areas have none at all."
The closure of pubs - and the transfer of their licences to hotels, off-licences and pubs in Dublin - has been particularly acute over the past decade.
"I suppose it was a simple question of economics - Dublin was offering great money for licences and it was increasingly difficult for small family pubs to maintain profitable operations in Cork city centre," Mr Dennehy said.
The Dennehy family pub, established on Cork's Coal Quay in 1956, once competed alongside 12 other premises, but by the mid-1990s, Coal Quay was left with just Dennehy's, though two new premises have since opened.
Some parts of the city now have no pubs. The famous Lavitt's Quay district, adjacent to Cork Opera House and various restaurants, once boasted five successful premises. Now it has just one.
Even on famous "drinking" streets, such as Shandon Street and Barrack Street, pressure on pub numbers has inexorably led to the closure of premises.
"I'd say that the number of pubs in the city has declined by between 30pc and 50pc over the past two decades, and the simple fact is that most of those licenses have gone to so-called "superpubs" in Dublin or off-licenses," Mr Dennehy said.
Yet, while Cork's pub numbers have plummeted, the total square footage of licensed premises has actually increased as the small, family-owned pubs have been replaced with large modern pubs.
