State should buy ailing rural pubs "for the sake of our mental health"

It comes as the Licensed Vintners Association (LVA) this weekend warned that three pubs a week are now closing their doors for good, in many cases depriving rural communities of a vital social lifeline.

Tipperary doctor Kathy McLoughlin said the social benefits of keeping country pubs open to serve their communities would justify the cost of State intervention. She said a Public House Land Trust could acquire at-risk premises and lease them back as "multi-use social hubs".

Roscrea-based Dr McLoughlin – who specialises in disability services, palliative care, gerontology and mental health – said the social price of pubs closing is "profound", and that "when the pub shuts, so too does the informal welfare system that has quietly operated for generations".

She told Extra.ie: "In my work at the Milford hospice [in Limerick], one of the conversations was about where is bereavement and all the things around it discussed? And of course it’s the local pub. That’s what came up time and again in our research. So much so that we actually brought a mobile pub close to the hospice so that people could visit it.

"When someone’s having a hard time, they often go down to the local pub, and very often it’s at the bar where people have profound conversations about life and death.

"If we are serious about sustaining rural Ireland, we need to stop treating pubs solely as private businesses and start seeing them as pieces of community infrastructure," Dr McLoughlin said.

Underlining the scale of the decline in rural premises, LVA chief executive Pat Crotty said an average of 112 pubs a year over the past 20 years have closed their doors, and that this figure is now averaging 128 closures a year.

He welcomed Dr McLoughlin’s call for State intervention but acknowledged the industry cannot rely on grants or goodwill.

Mr Crotty said the Government must "absolutely step in to help small rural publicans" to make trading easier for them.

But he stressed: "We’ve not looking for a grant; we’re looking for a level playing field.

"We had a model in Ireland that worked, in terms of the cost base versus the price, but over the last few years the Government have moved the goal posts.

"Pubs are disappearing and when they’re gone, we will miss them and we will have to try and reinvent them," he said.

The LVA chief said representatives of the rapidly declining industry have warned successive governments of the problem, but their pleas have largely fallen on deaf ears.

Mr Crotty told Extra.ie: "We have been saying this for a very long time. When I was in with the two Ministers for Finance before our budget submission, our parting remark was: 'Do you want the rural pub to survive at all?'" Underlining the vital role that rural pubs play in their communities, he said: "The pub isn’t just about drink, it’s about socialising, it’s about a safe place, a community place. There are so many roles that the local rural pub fulfils. But they can’t do anything if they’re not there."

Mr Crotty pointed to examples in European countries where governments subsidise pubs or bar owners in order to provide villages with a community hub.

‘"e made the point to government that in other countries, for example France, the government had given the mayors of small villages the power to award grants of up to €80,000 to people willing to open a pub or bar that can act as a social hub.

"They realise that for mental health, for wellbeing, for community, for loneliness, that they need these places."

Mr Crotty said his organisation will be seeking to address the Government directly on the matter again in the New Year.

* Originally published on Extra.ie.