How the Lockdown is Liberalising Irish Nightlife

On a recent Saturday evening in Dublin, the city centre was the busiest it had been in months. With certain restrictions lifted and businesses slowly reopening, people had decided to brave the outdoors. While pubs and bars were still closed, some were serving takeaway drinks. Barmen passed pints through hatches while punters walked around clutching plastic beer cups filled with freshly poured Guinness. In St. Stephen’s Green Park, groups of friends gathered for boozy picnics as seagulls squabbled over the contents of the overflowing bins. In Portobello, people sat on the banks of the Grand Canal to take part in the time-honoured tradition of ‘cans by the canal’.

This sort of outdoor drinking would be unremarkable in most European cities. In Dublin, however, it’s still something of a forbidden pleasure. While Ireland might be synonymous with pubs, pints and ‘craic’ [an Irish word for good times], it is home to some draconian laws around drinking and socialising. 

Many of these were introduced in a bid to curb antisocial behaviour. The Intoxicating Liquor Act 2008, for instance, was introduced to restrict the “availability and visibility of alcohol” and to provide “for more effective enforcement to deal with the consequences of alcohol abuse”. 

As a result, Irish night-time venues have the earliest closing times and shortest opening hours of anywhere in Europe, with bars and nightclubs forced to close at 3am. Off licenses are not permitted to sell alcohol after 10pm. Moreover, Dublin City Council has by-laws prohibiting the consumption of alcohol on roads and in public places, including open spaces, parks, beaches and canals. Now it feels as though a sea change is occurring. In recent months, drinking outdoors has become the norm, with Dubliners flocking outdoors for socially distanced tipples.

A reform of Ireland’s licensing laws appears to be on the cards. Following February's general elections, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party have just formed a coalition government. The three parties have negotiated a programme which notes  that “social distancing will have a major impact on nighttime culture”. As a result, the government has pledged to create a “vibrant, diverse and sustainable” night-time economy and establish a “Night-time economy task force” in its first 30 days of office. 

Change is Afoot

John Mahon runs two popular Dublin bars, The Circular and Lucky’s, both of which were forced to shut during lockdown. He quickly realised that the lockdown was going to “change drinking and socialising culture.” With that in mind, he set up Decent Drinks Club, a pop-up drinks store selling craft beers, wine and bottled cocktails. Additionally, The Circular also started serving takeaway pints of Guinness. Both have proved a huge hit and look set to remain a feature for the foreseeable future. 

He says that he has noticed the surge in Dubliners drinking outdoors. “What I have seen has been well managed,” he says. “It’s encouraging and might be a hint of what you might get if you opened things up a bit and took oppressive rules away.”

Mahon says there is an appetite for change in how we drink and socialise in Ireland. Increasingly, there are calls to pedestrianise streets and facilitate more al fresco drinking and dining. He predicts the lockdown might lead to “laws being brought up to date and minds being opened as to how things can be done”. “You might see this more eased outside drinking culture that you find in a lot of European cities,” he says.  

One of the other main battlegrounds has been around Ireland’s restrictive licensing laws. A Dublin City Council survey recently found that 73% of Dubliners have a negative view of the city’s nightlife, particularly compared to other European cities. Josepha Madigan, the former minister for culture, heritage and Gaeltacht (regions in Ireland where Irish is the main language), described the city’s night-time offering as “vanilla and bland” and called for the introduction of a Night Mayor. As seen in Amsterdam, London and elsewhere, a Night Mayor is a person who serves as an intermediary between night-time venues and elected officials. 

A campaign group, Give Us The Night, has been at the forefront of the struggle to reform Ireland’s nightlife culture for many years. They have called for the country to adopt a more progressive European approach with greater variety, more music, more dancing and longer opening hours.  “We want to put life back into the night is the bottom line,” says activist Sunil Sharpe. 

The campaign picked up steam in recent years and there now seems to be a political will to enact change. “We’ve gotten older and politicians in general seem to have gotten a little bit younger, too,” says Sharpe. “That’s helped. We’ve converged at the perfect time in that way. A lot of the people in the  [Dublin City] council chamber or in the Dáil [lower house of Parliament] are our age. They understand what this is about. They value the potential of the night-time economy.” 

The Downsides 

That said, many people still believe a reform of Ireland’s laws will lead to excessive drinking and antisocial behaviour. Some point to the fact that Ireland has one of the highest per capita alcohol consumption rates in Europe.

Mannix Flynn is an independent councillor at Dublin City Council, representing the south east inner city. “The drinking culture across Europe is very different to the drinking culture in Ireland and the British Isles,” he says, adding that he regularly gets complaints from residents unhappy about noise caused by people drinking.

These have grown more frequent since the lockdown. “I have had residents crying,” he says. “I had young women saying they could no longer cope with it. They can no longer get their children to sleep. The bottom line is when people get jar into them here [slang for: have a few drinks] they behave in a very, very different manner.”

Still, it seems unlikely that things will return to how they were before the lockdown. All over the city, people have grown accustomed to the new normal. During the lockdown, Caoimhe Rice has taken to meeting her friends for a few drinks outdoors. “I would love to see more of it in the future,” she says. “It was amazing to be able to enjoy the glorious weather and have a few cans. Everybody was commenting that we felt so continental.”

“There was a perception that the Irish couldn’t have been trusted before. But I didn’t see any trouble in all the times I’ve been out for a few drinks and for the most part everybody cleaned up after themselves.”

Similarly, Aisling O’Brien says that people were “enjoying themselves responsibly” any time she went to places like the Royal Canal or Fairview Park. Any issues around littering or public urination could be resolved with more bins and public toilets, she says. As Dublin emerges from lockdown, she believes the city should be more receptive to drinking and socialising in public places.

“It’s time for Dublin City Council to revitalise our outdoor spaces for public use whether it’s our parks or our streets,” she says. “This is less about drinking and more about community and catering for businesses that have taken a hit during the pandemic.”