Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I, too, welcome the late-night exemptions. Many of these businesses have been struggling since the pandemic. It is clear that many places have not come back to the levels of patronage they had. I count this measure as only a small gesture. Much more is needed to help the night-time industry to prosper.

Many of my clinics are held in public houses and I appreciate those people affording me a place to meet people. It is more than 20 years since I became a county councillor and started doing clinics.

When I go around to the different parishes, it is sad to see that so many pubs have closed. And we wonder why. I often see more people outside a bottle bank now. If you wanted to find a crowd before it would be at the creamery or the post office, but now you would have more of a crowd at a bottle bank at certain times than you would have inside a public house. It is clear to me that people are now more likely to drink in an unregulated manner at home than in regulated conditions where the measure was regulated and the time at which you drink was regulated. It was a much safer environment. It was more regulated than it is now, even after all the talk and ballyhoo. That is where we have finished up with. We will see more closures. It is a sad loss because when the local pub closes, you are also doing away with the culture of our people. It was a great attraction in rural villages and towns. It was where people met people. They had conversations, yarns, story-telling, songs and a bit of music. It attracted a certain type of clientele from other countries and other parts of our own country. It is sad to see the decline of that because I think Ireland will be at a loss. We really should appreciate our own culture because I believe we are different from and better than other peoples in other countries. I have no doubt about it. It is sad to see that a lot of that tradition has been lost and more of it will be lost as pubs close. There are some villages now without any pub where there had been three or four pubs. I will not name any village but there is one in particular that had over 30 pubs and there is no pub open there by day now. I believe many governments have succeeded in closing many of them in many rural places. I think it is a sad reflection on government when that is the truth of what has happened.

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